Red and Black
by Kirika-sama
Summary: Their pilgrimage for the past is over; only the present now matters... but for those who walk the dark path of murder all peace is fleeting.
1. Shattered Peace

Red And Black - By Kirika

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Hello! Well, it looks like it's big fanfic time once again. And you know what that means: lots of my ramblings about inconsequential things coupled with an excessive amount of smiley faces (^_^). Oh, and hopefully a decent story sandwiched in between that stuff.

This is a Noir fanfic, dealing with the Mireille/Kirika pairing. So it's shoujo-ai.

Some things in this chapter (events and thoughts) took place in my Noir one-shot, 'Black Turned Red' also. However, I tried to word them differently. I did consider making the one-shot a prequel to this fic, but I didn't want Mireille and Kirika's relationship to have progressed so far.

And finally, I don't own Noir. I do, however, own any original characters I create. No using them without my permission. Oh, and there are spoilers galore in this fanfic.

~This denotes translation~

Now that all that stuff is out of the way, on with the fic…

**FF version

**Now with linebreaks and [] brackets. Thanks for that FF. That was sarcasm, in case that was lost in upload too.

- Kirika

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Chapter 1 - Shattered Peace

Le noir.

~Noir.~

Ce mot désigne depuis une époque lointaine le nom du destin.

~This word designates since a distant epoch the name of destiny.~

Les deux vierges regnent sur la mort.

~The two virgins reign over death.~

Les mains noires protégent la paix des nouveaux-nes.

~The black hands protect the peace of the newly-born.~

- Extract from Langonel's Manuscript

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Mireille Bouquet, with a glass of water in one hand and still dressed in her nightshirt, quietly walked over to where the new pot plant resided on a small, Walnut-coloured, square wooden end table beside one window of her apartment. The blonde, statuesque woman bent down and carefully poured the liquid from the glass around the plant's stalk, giving it its morning watering as either she or her partner did every day. The plant was an orchid, like its predecessor that had once sat on the table before it, but so far no flowers had bloomed... also like its predecessor. However, Mireille was not disheartened. Under her and her colleague's constant nurturing over the past few weeks, several buds had formed that could be found nestled in between the plant's broad green leaves-a sign of things to come. Mireille hoped that this time the orchid would flower brilliantly.

Mireille put the now empty glass on the table by the potted orchid, and then stood up straight with a sigh, placing her hands on her hips and admiring the plant. After returning to her home in Paris, France, she had felt a compulsion to replace the orchid that had been destroyed in a shootout within her apartment. If she were honest with herself, she knew where the desire had stemmed from. Tending to the plant had been a small but precious diversion she and her partner had shared in the past, and, she rather grudgingly supposed, she had wanted to recapture the pleasant and comfortable air of that joint activity again.

Mireille turned around to face the rest of the apartment and all of the other items that had been replaced following its redecoration courtesy of countless bullets fired by a score of white-masked Soldats hitmen. The repairs had taken just under a couple of weeks, and now it was as if the intense gunfight that had ravaged the place months earlier had never occurred at all. Smashed windows had been restored with new glass panes, and not a single blemish could be made out on any of the painstakingly patched and freshly painted walls. All of the bullet hole ridden furniture and appliances had been removed and replaced also, including Mireille's computer, and, oddly enough, the billiard table she used as a desk. The woman wasn't sure why exactly she hadn't simply bought a real desk instead; it wasn't as if anyone used the table to actually play pool.

Mireille looked around the living room, surveying the apartment's new and improved décor with satisfaction. The specialists she had hired to restore her home had done a good job-as they should have considering the amount of money the Corsican had paid for their services-and had also been very discreet. Mireille's landlord hadn't asked any questions about why her apartment needed a near total renovation either. Money could buy most people's silence… among other things. But it had helped that her landlord knew that Ms. Bouquet was not a woman one crossed lightly… or even willingly.

Mireille's blue gaze came to rest on the black wall that separated the living room from the bedroom, behind which the other permanent resident of her home currently was. Her partner, Kirika Yuumura, was evidently still fast asleep in the bedroom.

A ghost of a smile crept upon Mireille's features as she conjured up the endearing image of the darkhaired girl snoozing peacefully in their bed. Normally as soon as Mireille woke up Kirika awakened with her, or had already been wide-awake beforehand. Even when it appeared that she was in a deep slumber, looking as vulnerable and as frail as ever, Kirika remained alert-at least on a subconscious level. It was a throwback to her extensive training as an assassin, Mireille imagined.

However, Kirika had yet to fully recover from the gunshot wound to her side she had sustained at the Manor-a result of throwing herself in front of a bullet meant for Mireille-and so slept in late most mornings. Mireille's own injuries had merely consisted of scrapes and shallow knife puncture wounds, all of which had healed relatively quickly without scarring, but Kirika's singular wound had been much more serious than all of hers combined. The quiet girl was still not at a hundred percent and needed her rest, thus Mireille had silently slipped out of the bed they shared this morning, more than happy to let her sleep. And provide the semblance of a normal atmosphere-a normal way of life-for Kirika's sake.

Mireille's faint smile strengthened and became bemused as she thought about how much things had changed in her relationship with Kirika… and consequently in her own life, as well. In the past Mireille wouldn't have had much concern about Kirika's wellbeing whatsoever as long as the girl survived long enough to lead her to her abhorred quarry, Soldats, and aid her in finding the answers behind why her family had been murdered. But now ensuring that her partner had a calm and relaxed environment to recuperate to full health in was one of Mireille's highest priorities. She had to admit Kirika had become the most important thing in her life… and for someone as fiercely independent as Mireille; that was saying a great deal.

Mireille wasn't exactly sure how or even when Kirika had snuck her way into her cold heart, but as time went by, slowly yet surely the blonde's uncaring attitude towards the introverted girl had changed. The ice encasing the Corsican assassin's hard heart had melted gradually living and working with Kirika, so much so that when she had at last learned the awful truth behind her family's death and the time had come to make good on her promise to execute her 'temporary' associate, she had faltered outright in doing so. Despite her pledge to kill Kirika when she was no longer useful, and even with the added incentive of the young assassin being the slayer of her parents and brother, Mireille hadn't been able to pull the trigger of her gun. At the very idea of ending Kirika's life Mireille's body had rebelled, and no matter what her mind had said she *should* be obligated to do, the stronger force of her warmed, thawed heart had stayed her hand.

Mireille had tried her utmost to resist warming up to Kirika any further when she had first realised her heart was softening to the quiet girl, but her efforts had been feeble and ultimately futile. Moreover, a part of Mireille-a part she hadn't liked to acknowledge at the time-hadn't really wanted to stop the growing changes between herself and Kirika. Mireille had never truly been close to anybody before after her hasty nocturnal leave-taking of Corsica-unless she counted her Uncle Claude when she was a child-and had been alone for many years following the end of her training in the ways of a contract killer. She had depended on no one but herself, *trusted* no one but herself. But being with Kirika had given her a taste of what it meant to share one's troubles and joys with another person… and Mireille had found it to her liking.

Nevertheless, Mireille had still went into a state of denial in regards to how she felt about Kirika, to such a degree that when her partner had left her side-or rather, had been abandoned by Mireille-the woman had resumed-or at least had attempted to resume-her prior lifestyle, and had tried to recapture her former independence. But it hadn't been that easy anymore. The absence of Kirika had left a hole in Mireille's life, and, if she were so inclined to admit, a hole in her heart as well. However, even with such a vast and bleak void inside of her, she had still tried to maintain her usual routine and forget about the Japanese girl she had once known and become so emotionally attached to…. But, thankfully, it wasn't meant to be.

Fearing what might happen in the future and knowing that a grim darkness lurked inside of her, Kirika had left behind a parting letter to Mireille, under the ruins of the orchid that had been so significant to both of them during the time they had spent together… although neither of them had ever stated the fact out loud. In that letter the withdrawn Kirika had confessed all of her feelings towards her blonde counterpart, plainly for the woman to see on paper. And when Mireille had read that letter, it had been enough to jolt her out of the delusion that she could simply forget about Kirika and return to her previous way of life. But even so, she had still used her right to fulfil her destiny and become Noir as an excuse to track down the missing girl; in spite of everything the-albeit weakening-denial of how she felt had still held fairly strong within her.

It hadn't been until the very end, until Kirika's life had been hanging by a thread, when Mireille had at last confronted the feelings that dwelled secretly within her heart. At that point, Kirika, thinking all her ties to the world gone, had been all but ready to die. It was then that Mireille had realised with crystal clear clarity that the girl's fate rested wholly in her hands. And so, the stubborn woman had finally let her mask of aloofness fall and had subsequently lowered herself to begging her partner to stay with her. Thankfully, it had been enough. Mireille had almost been too late, but with that tearful supplication Kirika had clung to her and in turn clung to life. At that moment Mireille had felt an overwhelming sense of relief in her heart and soul, of an intensity of such she had never experienced before. It was then she truly knew that Kirika meant everything to her; that she indeed was in love with the girl.

Once the two assassins had received professional-and surreptitious-medical treatment for their injuries in a town neighbouring the Manor and Kirika had recovered enough to travel, she and Mireille had returned home to Paris. But in spite of Mireille accepting the fact that she shared Kirika's feelings-or at the very least felt something romantically for her-not much was different in their relationship. Mireille was certainly enormously more affectionate towards Kirika now, but her fond gestures were limited to mere kind words and chaste touches. No affirmations of their feelings for one another had been exchanged either, and on Mireille's part, none ever had been uttered in the first place.

Mireille wasn't exactly sure why her relationship with Kirika had not progressed any further, but she had a feeling it was attributed to herself. Certainly, Mireille had made no effort to advance the relationship to an openly romantic level, and knowing Kirika, the introverted girl would follow her example and let her be in control, as usual. Was that it? Was Mireille simply waiting for Kirika to 'make a move', so to speak? It was a possibility, but the Corsican doubted it. She knew Kirika well, well enough to know that she would do nothing to forward their relationship until Mireille herself showed that she wished to. But if that were the case, then just what was holding Mireille back? Was she afraid of the commitment? No, ridiculous, considering she had been committed exclusively to Kirika for a considerable amount of time now. Perhaps it was because her partner was in actual fact responsible for the death of her family. Was Mireille troubled that her parents and brother were turning in their graves every time she let Kirika cuddle up close to her in bed at night? Did she believe that her heart was betraying their memory?

No. That was definitely not it. As soon as Mireille had learned that Kirika had been the one who had snuffed out her parents' and brother's lives, the woman, in spite of herself, had instantly forgiven her, even if she hadn't been consciously aware of it at the time. Mireille's heart had already been a captive of Kirika's back then. Furthermore, she didn't even view Kirika as the killer of her family. That 'honour' had been Altena's alone, who had wielded the girl when she was only a young child as a living, breathing instrument of murder-Kirika was a victim just as much as Mireille's family had been. Kirika had simply been a tool used by Altena… and the wicked Soldats follower had already paid for her crimes.

Whatever the reason for Mireille's seeming reluctance, she was comfortable with the way things were at the moment and she believed Kirika was too. She liked her current daily life. Her days were filled with peaceful times spent with Kirika, and she felt contentment with her existence that was completely new to her. Perhaps that was it; Mireille feared change, even if it were potentially for the better. She feared losing what she had already gained. Having a permanent partner, someone who even shared her living space, was quite a big step for the normally private woman. Mireille had never relied on or been emotionally close to anyone for a long, long while. Maybe all she needed was a little more time to grow used to the idea of having a genuine, stable, romantic relationship; more time to grow used to having a real… lover.

Mireille heaved a sigh and with a last glance in the direction of the bedroom, dismissed her reflections and walked over to the billiard table masquerading as a computer desk. She sat down in front of her PC and switched on the machine, hoping that the drone of it starting up would not disturb Kirika's sleep in the adjacent room. As soon as the computer's operating system had booted, Mireille logged onto the Internet and checked her secure email account. In her hazardous and illegal line of work, security and anonymity was imperative for continual business success. Mireille Bouquet was not only a beautiful woman living a life of privilege in Paris, but also one of the most reliable professional assassins in the criminal world. Of course, 'Mireille Bouquet' had apparently dropped out of the business in recent months. She now used a new name… and had a partner.

As Mireille had suspected, several assignment propositions for her and Kirika-or more accurately, Noir-were waiting for her in her email inbox. She pursed her lips thoughtfully as her eyes scanned the subject headers of the emails, but then promptly frowned in irritation as she realised what she was doing. As she was about to delete all of the emails before she could do something she would definitely regret, she noticed that yet another message from the clandestine society, Soldats, was present. Mireille's irritation suddenly increased twofold. She didn't need to read the contents of the email to know what it contained; it wasn't the first time she had received it. Nor, did she imagine, would it be the last. Soldats, or more accurately, one high-ranking member of the organisation, Remy Breffort, sought a meeting with her. But for exactly what reason, Mireille didn't know. Or care, for that matter. She was done with Soldats, and she didn't want herself or Kirika to have any more involvement with them ever again.

Mireille deleted all of the emails along with Breffort's message, as was quickly becoming her morning ritual. Noir was no longer a part of Soldats; the sooner the man recognised that fact the better.

Mireille logged off of the Internet and leaned back in her chair, exhaling heavily, and stared up at the ceiling. She ignored the prospective jobs solely for the sake of Kirika. She hadn't even told her about the emails requesting their services she was regularly receiving, preferring to hide the knowledge from the still recuperating girl. Mireille and Kirika's lives were peaceful-for the moment, at any rate-and the Corsican didn't want that other, darker life they had in common interfering with it. And she was positive Kirika didn't, either.

However, Mireille was also sure that she was only delaying the inevitable. She had willingly chosen to walk a black path in life, a black path filled with death-murder. Her life was that of an assassin, and nothing would change that; it was part of who she was. In truth, Mireille even missed the work. She had never had a problem with killing. Well, unless she considered the time in the graveyard with Kirika…. which she didn't.

But while Mireille had accepted that she would travel down a soiled, sinful path until the day she died, she felt differently in respect to Kirika. The diminutive girl was still young and yet she had probably seen more violence and murder than Mireille herself had. What Altena had exposed Kirika too, a mere child at the time…. Mireille ground her teeth and suppressed her rising anger. The fanatical Soldats member had damaged Kirika's mind with her immoral treatment. Another personality prowled inside of Mireille's normally rather shy counterpart, one that was as heartless as a pure cold-blooded killer. Mireille still remembered that persona… her eyes… her eyes had been devoid of feeling, of mercy… of life.

Yes, Mireille still remembered… and was still haunted by the memory of that other Kirika she had faced off with in the colosseum by the Manor. It was one of the primary reasons why she did her best to preserve a relaxed and normal atmosphere for herself and her partner to live in and enjoy. Kirika's short life had been full of bloodshed, so much so that the darkhaired girl had developed a defence mechanism in the form of another persona to cope with the horrors she had no doubt witnessed… and carried out herself. And Mireille was almost certain that the sinister personality still remained with Kirika. Thus, the blonde woman wanted to keep that other side of her partner repressed, and she hoped that an ordinary lifestyle would help to do that.

Moreover, Mireille believed that it was working. Kirika, while still relatively taciturn, appeared to be happy. At least she smiled a little more often now, as if she were a normal girl with no skills whatsoever in the art of murder. Sometimes, however, her unmatched combat abilities manifested themselves unconsciously. The manner in which she handled knives while doing everyday chores such as cooking came to mind, as well as the way she had of seeming to be as withdrawn as always when outside of the apartment, but at the same time constantly vigilant of any possible threats; a sort of relaxed readiness.

Mireille smiled wryly up at the ceiling, shaking her head slightly. She had never in a million years believed that she would end up living with a Japanese schoolgirl, who was also a fellow assassin with expertise even surpassing her own, and if that wasn't enough, fall in love with her too of all things. But now here she was, doing her utmost to protect the same girl and keep her happy. Love certainly made you do strange things.

"Morning," a soft voice spoke in Japanese from a few feet in front of Mireille, bringing her out of her contemplations.

Mireille straightened in her chair to look at Kirika who was standing at the bottom of the steps that led to the bedroom. The two normally conversed in Japanese when they were alone together, which was practically all of the time. And living in Paris, where the majority of the population predominantly spoke in French, the voluntary language barrier gave Mireille and Kirika a sense of privacy even when in a crowd of people; their own little world where only the two of them existed. In actuality, they had always communicated in Japanese since they first met, only switching to French or another language when it was called for, customary for the sake of others. Perhaps it was because they had encountered each other in Japan in the beginning, and the practice of speaking in the country's native tongue had simply stuck. Mireille didn't know for sure, but whatever the habit's origin, her Japanese had certainly improved a great deal since meeting Kirika.

"Ah, so you're finally awake, sleepy head," Mireille teased at the sight of Kirika, the girl looking quite dishevelled from sleeping, with her dark locks tousled wildly and her vest and shorts that made up her nightwear creased and twisted. It painted a positively adorable picture in Mireille's eyes, one she hadn't been able to resist commenting on. But then she did often nowadays take pleasure in poking light-hearted fun at poor Kirika. "Are you sure you don't want to go back to bed? It *is* still early…" Mireille went on, but only half-joking this time, aware that the recuperating girl required her rest.

Kirika lowered her head and looked at Mireille though her bangs, a small, rueful smile forming on her features in response to the woman's ribbing. She then shook her head, the action accompanied by a cute sound in the negative; one of many idiosyncrasies that Mireille found endearing.

"Alright," Mireille said, pushing her chair back from the billiard table on its wheels. "How are you feeling today? Come here so I can check how you're progressing."

Kirika dutifully walked over to the blonde and stood in front of her chair. "I feel better," she quietly informed Mireille as the woman lifted the bottom of her vest to inspect the injury beneath, "but I'm still tired."

Mireille nodded absently at Kirika's report while she studied the gunshot wound in her partner's side. It appeared to have finally healed up completely, leaving behind only the faintest of scars. Mireille reached up and gingerly traced the mark with one fingertip, her touch feather-light on the darkhaired girl's silky-smooth skin. Every time she saw the wound it brought back the unpleasant memory of Kirika intercepting Altena's bullet with her own body in an act of selflessness. But at the same time, it was a reminder of the extent of Kirika's feelings for Mireille-a testament of her love. It always filled Mireille with a sense of… wonder, that someone cared that much about her to make such a self-sacrificing gesture.

Mireille blinked as it dawned on her that she had ceased circling the scar and was now using her whole hand to rub-or rather, caress-Kirika's taut stomach with gentle strokes. Acutely aware that Kirika had stopped breathing, she abruptly halted the motions of her wayward hand and looked up at the girl, only to meet rapt reddish-brown eyes with her own apprehensive blue ones. Somewhat guiltily, Mireille drew back her hand and let Kirika's vest fall back into place before dropping her gaze and forcing a cough, seeking a means to dispel the awkward moment, although she wasn't sure why she felt it was one.

"You… you seem to be recovering fine," Mireille said, her voice a little hoarse. "After a few more days of rest you should be perfectly fit."

Kirika said nothing and merely nodded, her countenance now one of her usual subdued expressions.

"But in the meantime, I want to go shopping," Mireille continued, her tone becoming more blithe as she snatched onto something lighter to talk about. "*Clothes* shopping…" she then elaborated, her expression turning considerably sly as she ran her eyes over Kirika's lithe figure, pretending to size her up.

Kirika blinked a couple of times and then swallowed a bit uneasily-Mireille knew that she understood what going clothes shopping meant. Mireille loved pampering Kirika, especially with material things. Her favourite form of indulgence was buying new clothes for her reticent partner. She simply adored using the slip of a girl as a model for her to play dress-up with. Fortunately, Kirika stoically consented to Mireille's little pleasure… although with a mildly noticeable lack of enthusiasm… that the blonde summarily ignored, needless to say.

"Mireille…" Kirika said, almost whining out the woman's name, and with a tiny hint of longsuffering in her soft voice.

Mireille merely smiled, implicitly knowing that Kirika would concede to her wishes, and also relishing the way the Japanese girl said her name. Mireille wasn't sure if it was because of her accent or just another one of her quirks, but Kirika had a unique and exquisite way of pronouncing her name. It was like her sweet tongue caressed each and every syllable of the Corsican's name in a special and intimate fashion as it left her lips, and it always served to send a trill of delight through Mireille. She doubted she would ever grow weary of hearing the enchanting sound.

Mireille took the hem of one leg of Kirika's shorts between a finger and a thumb and rubbed it thoughtfully. "Hmm…" she murmured with false deliberation, "I think you could use more shorts. And perhaps some new pyjamas as well." Mireille did her best to restrain the smile that threatened to spoil her mock serious examination of her partner's clothing. She had a feeling that today was going to be an entertaining one… for her, at least.

"Pyjamas?" Kirika parroted somewhat uncertainly, as she blinked again and looked down at her clothes.

* * *

Mireille took a sip of her frothy cappuccino and then settled back in her plush seat with a content sigh, savouring the flavour of her beverage. She and her virtually inseparable companion, Kirika, who was seated across from her, were in a private booth located in one of the many cafés scattered along the streets of Paris, the pair taking a short respite from their enjoyable-yet quite exhausting-shopping expedition for lunch. A dozen glossy bags overflowing with designer clothes ranging from skirts to socks purchased from a variety of exclusive boutiques were crammed next to Kirika at her side of the booth, all of which the slender girl had carried herself. Mireille did feel a tiny bit guilty about her own... well, laziness to put it bluntly. More often than not she allowed Kirika to do just about all of the menial tasks that filled their normal daily lives, such as hauling grocery bags and luggage around, as well as setting and washing tableware. In the past, the woman had eventually wound up viewing her partner as sort of a little 'servant'; or in other words, someone to do all the jobs she herself didn't like doing… and old habits apparently died hard. Mireille frequently slipped into her domineering role even though the nature of her relationship with Kirika was now… at least somewhat different, permitting the compliant girl to do most of the chores inside and outside their apartment. And it didn't help that Kirika never ever protested the treatment and even seemed glad to be devotedly lending a hand, regardless of how hard she toiled as a result. However, she did assist the girl when they cooked at home, Mireille thought defensively, squirming a little in her seat. That was *something*, wasn't it?

Nearly every garment contained within each of the shopping bags alongside Kirika had been graciously-yet also slightly reluctantly-modelled by the pretty darkhaired girl for her older partner's own personal gratification. The corners of Mireille's full lips twitched and then curled upwards into a small smile as she recalled the memory of Kirika wearing one of her new sets of silk pyjamas. They were a little baggy on her, almost swallowing her diminutive frame completely in their folds, but that had only added to the whole cute and lovable vision. Mireille had prudently stayed away from choosing any new undergarments for her, however. Strangely, for some reason the idea of making Kirika pose in her underwear made Mireille a tad uncomfortable.

Mireille brought her coffee cup to her lips and watched Kirika over its rim as the girl, dressed in one of her newly acquired outfits she had changed into earlier under her partner's 'suggestion', idly picked at the remains of her ham and cheese croissant, pushing the remnants around on her plate. She looked distant, as if something were on her mind, perhaps even troubling her.

Mireille's face fell a little and she took another drink of her cappuccino to hide the expression. Kirika often retreated into her own private world; she had even done so in the past, when she and the Corsican had first met-Mireille remembered when the quiet girl would stare out of one of the apartment's windows at seemingly nothing for hours at a time.

Mireille frequently wondered what Kirika ruminated on during those withdrawn periods of hers, appearing totally detached from her surroundings. She sometimes considered simply asking her, but she doubted even she would get a straight answer from the reticent girl, or at least one that would satisfy her. Looking at Kirika now while she gazed vacantly out the large front window of the café their booth was adjacent to, the leftovers of her lunch forgotten, Mireille thought she looked rather sad as well as distant. Of course that wasn't saying too much considering that her normal everyday expression was usually melancholic. But after having lived with Kirika for the better part of a year now, Mireille could generally tell how her brooding partner was feeling on the inside. She had learnt that using Kirika's lovely brown eyes to determine her emotional state was the easiest and most accurate method. Her eyes were so expressive, soulful, and they seemed to speak volumes-poignant words poured straight from her heart… well, poured straight to Mireille at any rate. And right at this very moment, Kirika's brown orbs said clearly to the blonde that something was definitely bothering her. Mireille sighed softly. She wished Kirika were able to share her problems with her.

But instead of confronting Kirika on her evident preoccupation, Mireille plucked a random topic of conversation out of the air, feeling that she had to say something, even if its subject matter was in essence basically small talk.

After taking one last sip of her coffee, Mireille put her cup down with an exaggerated breath, smacking her lips. "After lunch why don't we go shopping for more clothes?" she piped up, placing her elbows on the table and propping her head in her hands as she looked at Kirika.

Kirika turned away from the view of bustling people and heavy traffic outside the café's window at the sound of Mireille's cheerful voice, roused from her private thoughts. She favoured Mireille with a glance before flicking her eyes to the mound of boutique bags beside her for a second, and then directed a questioning look at the keen blonde.

"Oh no, not for you. I believe you have more than enough outfits," Mireille clarified, but not before furtively adding, "…for the time being." Somehow she managed to contain the large grin that wanted to burst out on her face at the sight of a fairly nervous-looking Kirika.

"No, you've had all the fun thus far and now it's my turn," Mireille quickly continued, before leaning forward conspiringly towards her partner, a faint smile on her features. "And this time, *I'll* be *your* model," she whispered with a playful wink as her smile turned more than a little seductive.

Kirika simply stared at Mireille for a moment, her steady gaze only broken by several languid blinks, but she then nodded eagerly while making her patented peep of approval. She smiled shyly at Mireille and then started to open her mouth to say something, but stopped suddenly as her eyes shifted to the right of the blonde woman, her countenance returning to its fundamentally emotionless mask.

Mireille blinked and then followed Kirika's gaze to her left, meeting a waiter's apologetic eyes. The assassin frowned in irritation at having her banter with her colleague rudely interrupted and then sat back properly in her seat, glaring coldly at the now even more remorseful waiter.

"Well?" Mireille snapped in French as she folded her arms, quite annoyed… and inwardly a little embarrassed at having been caught stretched over halfway across the table to Kirika. She was suddenly very glad she spoke in Japanese to her.

The waiter, obviously flustered by the imposing woman's ire, stumbled over his words for a few seconds, his eyes occasionally darting to an apathetic Kirika as if she could somehow help him out of his predicament, before finally informing Mireille that he had been asked to deliver a note to her and her friend's table. He brandished the crisp white envelope in his hand for further emphasis whilst smiling sheepishly.

Mireille deftly snatched the envelope from the waiter's grasp before he could even react in the slightest, and then examined it carefully. One could never be too cautious in her line of work. While Mireille may not have been actively accepting contracts for a couple of months now, it didn't mean she had become stupid or sloppy. Indeed, her handbag next to her contained a fully loaded Walther P99, her firearm of choice. The idea of not taking her weapon when she left the safe haven of her apartment was simply foreign to Mireille. It was better to be safe than sorry; who knew when an old memory with a score to settle would somehow track her down? Besides, between her and Kirika only she carried a firearm now-the girl hadn't replaced her last gun after it had burnt up with Altena in the volcanic cavern below the Manor. And for the moment, Mireille intended to keep it that way. If Kirika carried a gun it would only serve to dispel the happy and peaceful atmosphere she currently lived in-the heavy burden of a lethal weapon almost constantly by her side put a damper on even Mireille's spirits nowadays; she didn't want to think what it would do to her poor brooding partner's. But by all means Kirika wasn't defenceless without a firearm; even unarmed she was a devastating opponent. Her combat skills were beyond the scope of most people's even much older than she, including those who had dedicated their whole lives to warfare. Kirika was a living weapon.

"Who asked you to deliver this?" Mireille queried the waiter as she continued with her inspection of the letter.

"Er, I don't know. The manager just told me to take it to you," the waiter replied, shrugging.

On the front face of the envelope in Mireille's hands was simply her full name, written in long, flowing script. The envelope itself was thin, and Mireille doubted that any sort of explosive could have been hidden inside. That didn't rule out the presence of a biological agent, though. The Corsican assassin gingerly brought the envelope up to her nose and surreptitiously sniffed it, trying to detect any telltale odours of a chemical weapon or poison soaked into the paper within... and without exposing herself to it. Needless to say, if the envelope itself were contaminated, it would be far too late. But since the waiter hadn't keeled over just yet, Mireille had assumed the note was safe to touch.

"You're still here…?" Mireille said pointedly to the lingering waiter as she finished her investigation. She maintained her attention on the mysterious envelope however, under the alert gaze of Kirika, and the baffled gaze of the now startled waiter. "Find out who is responsible for this letter," the assassin ordered the man, opting to give him more than a hint to what action he should be taking.

"Uhh, of course, I was just… umm," the waiter spluttered, searching for an excuse for his loitering. However, after seeing that Mireille had already dismissed him from her mind, he gave up and walked away, all the while muttering something under his breath about prissy women and their uptight attitudes. Mireille, although catching his parting remarks, paid them no heed-she was more concerned about the envelope. Besides, to her knowledge there was no contract out on the discourteous waiter. It would have been a waste of bullets and money to teach him some respect-if she shot every person impolite to her or simply incompetent, she would have went out of business long ago.

"It seems clean," Mireille said to Kirika in Japanese once the waiter was out of earshot-just to be safe-and looked up from the note.

"Mm," Kirika mumbled in the affirmative. She looked down at the envelope in her colleague's hand and then raised her head to look the woman in the eye, silently asking the question that was dancing on Mireille's own tongue.

Deciding to alleviate her and her partner's curiosity, Mireille carefully opened the letter, and after nothing untoward happened, she delicately pulled out its contents between her thumb and forefinger. The envelope had contained a single sheet of folded paper, which Mireille now warily opened. Her brow creased in irritation and all worry left her as she scanned the familiar text that was written on the paper, which she had read numerous times in the form of emails received on her computer, before her expression turned into an all out scowl when she came to the signature at the end of the message. Breffort. Naturally. Did he really think that signing his own name rather than the group he belonged to made his message more appealing to her?

Mireille's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits as she crushed the note in her hand, conscious of the concerned look she was getting from her oblivious partner. And how dare Breffort disturb her and Kirika's peace. Messages in her private email account were one thing, but a letter delivered out in the open, and in front of Kirika no less…. Soldats. How Mireille hated those who supposedly 'held the world'.

"Mireille…?" Kirika questioned uncertainly as Mireille sharply half-rose from her seat, the woman's eyes darting around the café, searching for any suspicious character that stood out and could have been responsible for relaying the note.

Mireille's questing eyes caught the waiter's who had presented the letter. The uniformed man started at her piercing blue glare, almost dropping the tray laden with full drinking glasses he was carrying, but then recovered with only a splash of soda on his white shirt. With one minutely shaking hand he pointed to his right, giving a wan smile to Mireille as he did so.

The assassin snapped her head in the direction of the waiter's finger, and saw that he was indicating an immaculately garbed man in a black suit and tie who was striding calmly yet swiftly across the floor of the café, heading for the front door-doubtless he was the individual who had asked the manager of the establishment to deliver Breffort's message to Mireille and Kirika's table. Judging by his shifty apparel, reminiscent of many a Soldats minion the blonde and her companion had slain, as well as his unmistakable enthusiasm to vacate the premises, Mireille was absolutely positive that he worked for the secret society.

Mireille mentally bit off a curse, grabbed her handbag, and then hurried after the Soldats courier as he reached the entrance of the café and opened the glass door, leaving the building. The Corsican, a moment behind him, threw open the café door and stepped out onto the footpath outside, just in time to see the darkly dressed man quickly open the rear passenger door of an equally darkly painted sedan parked across from her in the street. He obviously knew she was on to him.

Mireille dashed forwards, hoping to intercept the Soldats agent before he climbed into the safety of the black vehicle, but was rudely halted in her tracks as she bumped into a passer by. Mireille turned angrily to give a brief grimace of annoyance to the bad-mannered man she had knocked into-he hadn't even given a semblance of an apology!-but only caught a glimpse of shoulder length stark white hair and the back of a long jet black coat before he blended into the swarms of people travelling along the footpath.

Hearing a car door slam shut jerked Mireille's attention back to the ebony sedan, and to the woman's disgust she saw that her momentary distraction had been enough to allow the Soldats messenger to escape. She scrunched the letter still held in her left hand into a tighter ball. She was sure there would be other Soldats couriers in the future to relay her own message; one way or another Breffort would learn of her displeasure at being hounded.

All of a sudden Mireille was hurled backwards through the air by a tremendous explosion, originating from the sedan that had erupted into a huge ball of flame, fiery tendrils reaching out to consume the footpath and most of the street as well. Mireille felt the intense heat of the blast along with its force on her body as she smashed through the glass pane of the café's entrance at the same time the entire front window of the restaurant was blown inwards, showering patrons inside with a deluge of sharp shards.

Mireille lay on her back, staring up at the café's partially blackened ceiling, its cream coloured paint now streaked with scorch marks. Her body felt numb and she could hear a faint ringing in her ears… but that was all. Kirika's anxious face suddenly appeared above Mireille, the girl's lips moving rapidly, but all the blonde could do was blink stupidly up at her in response, hearing nothing. However, as she continued to simply stare at Kirika, the ringing in her ears gradually became more perceptible, the ringing turning into a piercing shriek, almost as if she was being exposed to a steadily mounting high frequency soundwave, until-

"-reille? Mireille?" Kirika's fretful voice cut into Mireille's hearing without warning, the buzzing in her ears fading until it disappeared beyond audible range. Mireille was glad the explosion had not damaged her eardrums. Unfortunately, sensation had also returned to her body. She had forgotten how much it hurt to be flung through solid glass.

"I'm… alright," Mireille assured her concerned partner in a croaky voice as she struggled to sit up, mindful of the doubtless myriad of jagged glass flakes she was lying on. Her back ached something fierce, and she was sure she had sustained numerous cuts and bruises, but she didn't think she had broken anything.

Kirika helped Mireille sit up with tentatively placed hands, her support careful yet helpful. The blonde flashed her considerate colleague a grateful smile, and then reached her right hand up to touch her head, only to realise that somehow she had managed to keep a hold of her handbag despite being violently propelled like a rag doll into the café through its front door. Mireille was pleased. Even when rocked by an explosion, being forcibly parted from one's weapon was unacceptable for a professional assassin. The danger to one's person didn't necessarily stop when the explosions did.

With Kirika's assistance, Mireille clambered unsteadily to her feet, accompanied by a tinkle of shattered glass that had stuck to her back falling like glittering dewdrops to the floor. The woman took her time to assess the destruction… and piece together what could have happened. Wisps of flame billowed through the destroyed front window of the café, with the remaining ragged glass attached along the edges of the frame giving the impression of a huge gaping maw breathing fire. Turning her gaze outside, Mireille saw the blazing skeleton of the Soldats car, the vehicle utterly gutted to a charred wreck. The still raging fires hid most of the chassis' interior, but she was sure she could make out two well-cooked bodies inside. It appeared that Breffort's messenger and his associate had not escaped after all.

But the two Soldats agents weren't the only casualties by far. Littering the street were several corpses-or soon to be corpses-simply people in the wrong place at the wrong time who had caught the brunt of the blast. There were even more than a few victims inside the café, some of them horribly wounded and unmoving unfortunates sprawled on the floor, having been thrown through the front window from the footpath outside, while others who had been sitting next to the window had been badly cut by flying glass as well as scorched by searing flames. All in all the fatalities of the car bomb, if indeed that was what it had been, were extensive. Mireille had been extremely lucky to avoid serious injury.

On seeing the booth where she and Kirika had only had lunch minutes before now a melted mess, Mireille turned worriedly to the girl.

"Are you alright?" she asked, consciously keeping all but a little concern out of her voice.

"Mm," Kirika nodded, her eyes flicking to their demolished table and then back to Mireille, understanding. "I followed behind you."

"Good," Mireille said, quite calmly, but with relief welling up inside of her. If Kirika had remained in her seat, she didn't want to imagine what could have happened.

Mireille noticed that all of the new clothes she had bought for Kirika had also been ruined beyond all recognition. And while the sight rankled Mireille's nerves-some of those outfits she had really wanted to see Kirika in again! Well, they could always go on more clothes shopping trips-right now that was the least of their problems. Someone had taken out two Soldats agents-Breffort's agents. Why? Infighting in the organisation perhaps? A little internal strife? It was feasible, but without further information all Mireille had was speculation.

"Mireille," Kirika said, her soft voice interrupting the woman's musings.

Mireille looked at Kirika, and saw her partner lower her brown eyes pointedly to her left hand. The Corsican followed her gaze, suddenly aware of the crumpled paper she still held. Evidently she had managed to retain her grasp on that too. Mireille lifted her left hand and frowned at the letter in it. Had the Soldats courier and his driver died because of this note? But it was only a simple message, one merely requesting that Mireille contact and meet with Breffort as soon as possible, just like all the emails before it. Was that worth killing two people and who knew how many innocent bystanders in the process? It didn't add up.

Police and ambulance sirens could be heard wailing in the distance; they would soon be here. It was long past time to be gone. Mireille certainly didn't want to be caught up in answering questions asked by the authorities, especially with a gun in her handbag. Besides, something had happened here today that didn't sit well with her, which may even involve her and Kirika. And she intended to find out what.

* * *

It was dusk by the time Mireille arrived back at the apartment building. For the remainder of the day, after a short visit back home following the car bombing, she had been out on the streets-the backstreets mostly-of Paris, seeing what she could learn from her usual rumourmongers who normally kept their ear to the ground regarding events in the underworld and the circumstances behind them, no matter how significant or trivial. She had been to see many people, some less scrupulous than others, and after loosening tongues with cash incentives and filtering out the illogical hearsay and fervent personal beliefs, the solid facts she had gathered all said more or less the same thing. An unexpected and disquieting thing.

Mireille trudged up the apartment building's flight of stairs to the first floor, lugging her yellow scooter with some difficultly beside her. Normally Kirika would do such labour for her, but on the Corsican's insistence, the obliging girl had remained behind at home. Mireille had cited it would be faster for her to zip around town collecting information by herself using her scooter. However, there had also been another reason why the assassin had wanted Kirika to stay in the apartment, one she hadn't told her. While it was obviously safer to wait in the security of their home, the main reason was that Mireille hadn't wanted Kirika's quiet and peaceful atmosphere to be harmed anymore than it had already been with the carnage at the café. The majority of the individuals the blonde had consulted were not the most… honest of people, to put it lightly. In truth, a good number were hardened criminals. Even in broad daylight, a woman and a girl alone in a seedy part of the city made tempting targets, especially with the well-to-do manner Mireille carried herself with. Of course, anybody who tried anything would have regretted it for the rest of his or her suddenly drastically shortened life, but the violence that would inevitably break out would undoubtedly extinguish whatever shred of tranquillity and believability Kirika's happy and normal living environment still had. Mireille would maintain the façade of an ordinary and serene way of life for as long as she could for Kirika's sake. Not until the bullets were flying in their direction would she finally concede that their black pasts had finally caught up with them, staining the light they lived in with darkness.

Mireille grunted in quite an unladylike fashion as she at last struggled up to the top of the staircase hauling her heavy load. It had been a long time since Mireille had last utilised her scooter before today. It was designed for only one person to ride, and now that she was no longer living alone indefinitely, she hadn't had much use for it. It was very rare when Mireille left the apartment without Kirika by her side, today notwithstanding, and the pair usually either walked to their destination or took a taxicab. They sometimes took advantage of the Metro, the subway system that ran beneath Paris like a subterranean spider's web, but only if pressed. Mireille preferred the privacy of a cab and was more than willing to pay for it.

But perhaps it was time for her to trade in her faithful yellow scooter for something that allowed more passengers. A car maybe, or even an actual motorbike. Mireille smiled at the thought of cruising around the streets of Paris on a juiced up motorbike with Kirika riding behind her; the girl's arms wrapped tightly around her waist while she snuggled into her back, naturally. Mireille wasn't really a big fan of motorbikes, but it certainly would be a lot of fun, and not to mention a great deal better than walking.

Mireille reached the apartment she shared with Kirika at the end of the hall and unlocked the door and entered, wheeling her scooter inside. As she walked into the living room, she saw Kirika sitting at the computer on the billiard table, watching TV on its monitor. A report on the car bombing outside the café was showing on the PC's screen, the channel set to a local news station that the darkhaired girl was regarding intently. However, she turned her attention to Mireille as the woman trundled her scooter past her to park it in its usual spot by the window, but not before then, somehow implicitly distinguishing that her partner had returned to the apartment and not an intruder instead without so much as looking in her direction. Mireille wondered how Kirika did it.

"What are they saying?" Mireille inquired as she walked over to the billiard table and casually tossed her handbag with her Walther P99 inside on it.

"It's being said that it was a car bomb and that there have been a total of seven deaths so far. There have been over a dozen injuries, too. Some are critical. The two men that were inside the car haven't been identified yet," Kirika said, knowing that Mireille was referring to the news stations she had occupied herself with viewing while left alone. "No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the reporters are saying that it could be gang related."

Mireille nodded. It was merely the bare essentials, the most basic of facts. The assassin had anticipated as much. It was natural for the media. It was uncommon when they actually got it right when it involved the underworld, and this time with Soldats involvement, it was doubly unlikely the news stations would.

There was silence between Mireille and Kirika for a few moments, and the blonde woman was acutely aware of the expectant look she was receiving from her partner. But Mireille wasn't very eager to disclose what she had discovered to Kirika. Her eyes went to Breffort's creased note that was lying flattened out on the green surface of the billiard table, next to the computer. Kirika hadn't asked whether or not it was the first message Mireille had gotten from the high-ranking Soldats member, and the Corsican hadn't told her either. It was better to keep that fact secret Mireille had decided; she wasn't sure how the generally stoic girl would take her duplicity. But in Mireille's eyes, it wasn't really duplicity. More like withholding the whole truth. It had been for Kirika's sake anyway; that made it justified, didn't it?

Mireille exhaled heavily. Kirika still hadn't said anything, but the silence between them was deafening. She could practically feel the girl's brown gaze on her, waiting patiently for her report. There was no prompting on Kirika's part, just quiet tolerance, noiselessly waiting for her to say something. Somehow that mute patience seemed to demand that Mireille speak more than encouraging words would have.

"I've found out something," Mireille finally admitted with some reluctance, "not much, but something." She looked up from the crumpled letter to meet Kirika's expressive eyes. "The word going around is that…" She paused for a second, knowing the impact this would have on their quiet existence. Perhaps she just wanted to soak up the remaining peacefulness for one single moment longer.

Mireille swallowed and then sighed, before continuing. "The word is that the car bombing was… was Noir's doing." She stopped for an instant to let it sink into the girl, and also for her to gauge Kirika's reaction. But Mireille's taciturn colleague simply blinked, nothing more. Sighing once again, Mireille went on with her report. "Supposedly Noir has returned to Europe after a few months hiatus. Either that, or they are back in business."

It wasn't the first time someone else other than Mireille and Kirika had claimed to be Noir. Indeed, the duo had met Chloe, the self-proclaimed 'True Noir', that way. Many contract killers in the underworld had taken on the title before Mireille and Kirika, and with the pair apparently vanished from the scene, some ambitious individual or individuals who believed they had the expertise to back up the name had taken advantage of their absence. Or at any rate, that appeared to be the case.

"Noir…" Kirika suddenly whispered, as if the word held special significance…. which in truth it did. She stared off into space as she spoke the feared title of the greatest assassin, or rather, pair of assassins in the business, seeming lost in thought. She then abruptly blinked, snapping out of her reverie, and her eyes moved to the letter resting atop the billiard table at the same time Mireille's did.

Mireille had no doubt what was running through her own mind was running through Kirika's as well. With the grapevine proclaiming that Noir had detonated the car bomb outside the café, it was likely that Breffort would believe that Mireille and Kirika were responsible for the deaths of his agents, and had performed an act of hostility against Soldats, effectively declaring war. While Mireille had no love for the group, she didn't want to go head to head against their entire force, or even solely against Breffort's own. Who knew how many belonged to the cloak-and-dagger society? It would be like fighting against the whole world-not a fight Mireille was raring to rush into, or to have Kirika engaged in either. Between the two of them they had killed an incalculable number of Soldats agents, but unbeknownst to them at the time, it had been during controlled conditions. The skirmishes had been tests, mere trials to see if they were worthy of becoming Noir. Going against a completely unleashed Soldats would be a very different experience.

So there was no choice. Even if just to assure Breffort that she and Kirika weren't to blame for the attack on Soldats, Mireille would have to meet with the man. It seemed he would finally get his much sought after meeting in spite of everything. But whatever he had to say, Mireille didn't care. She would go only to pledge her and Kirika's innocence, nothing more. She flat out refused to become embroiled in some Soldats plot, dragging along her partner for the ride too. Kirika was still recovering from her injuries sustained at the Manor; she didn't need anything more to worry about.

Mireille's shoulders sagged as she closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of Breffort's note. Regardless of her intentions, there was a good chance that simply conceding to Breffort's wishes spelt the end of her and Kirika's peaceful lifestyle. Or perhaps, the woman thought sadly, it was already at its end.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

And so it begins. Finally! ^_^ This was a fairly long first chapter, but I had to reintroduce some things mentioned in 'Black Turned Red'. I hope it is okay, and that the story will flesh out to something decent and entertaining.

The sounds Kirika makes when saying yes or no (those little mumbles) are more or less Japanese, but I figured Mireille wouldn't know exactly.

Oh, and yes, Mireille's PC (the original and this new one) does in fact have a TV antenna. Yes, really. ^_^


	2. An Unwelcome Briefing

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The second chapter.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 2 - An Unwelcome Briefing

Mireille watched the floor indicator lights illuminate gradually upwards as she waited for the elevator to arrive at level seventeen. The level where Breffort's office was located. It wasn't the first time Mireille had been in this elevator, riding up to Breffort's office... although her intent back then had been somewhat different than it was now. In actual fact, she had tracked down the distinguished Soldats member to this very building after…. Well, that was all in the past now.

Mireille had replied to the most recent of Breffort's harrying emails and arranged a meeting time for today in the afternoon-one day after the car bomb incident outside of the Aux Villes Du Nord café. She had been a little surprised when the man had emailed her back requesting that they convene at the same building she had once 'visited' him at before. But, in retrospect, she shouldn't have been. Those of the society of Soldats could be expected to be awfully arrogant, especially those who ranked on upper most rungs of the organisation's hierarchal ladder-they considered themselves as the puppeteers who held and hence controlled the world on strings, strings that no one even realised were there. Despite Mireille knowing where he worked as an alleged legitimate and ordinary entrepreneur, Breffort hadn't moved from the commonplace office building the assassin had first tracked him down to. Although, it wasn't as if Mireille were type to blow the whistle on his other, more atypical activities… not unless she wanted her own secret life exposed in retaliation.

Oddly, in his email reply, Breffort had given no allusion of hostility in his words nor had he even mentioned the car bombing yesterday; not so much as the smallest hint of ominous subtext was contained in his message. It had been totally businesslike; straight and to the point. Mireille wasn't sure what to make of that. He had to have known the story going around the streets was that Noir was responsible for the bombing. She would have been amazed if he didn't; Soldats seemed to know all and see all… most of the time, anyway. Still, it wasn't like Breffort was the most animated person alive; regardless of the professional air of his message it was yet likely that he was plotting Mireille and Kirika's deaths at this very minute. She and Kirika had better keep their guard up.

Mireille smiled grimly and gripped the handles of her handbag a little tighter in her grasp. As if their guard had been down to begin with. The weight of her gun hidden in the handbag carried by her side was a reassuring one. If a squad of armed Soldats underlings were lying in wait for her and Kirika to emerge from the elevator with lethal intentions in mind, then they would soon learn with horrendous clarity why the pair had once been rightfully known as Noir. But Mireille doubted Breffort would be foolish or desperate enough to attack them directly outside his own office. It simply wasn't his style. It wasn't Soldats' style.

Mireille turned her attention away from the elevator's level indicator and surreptitiously shifted her eyes to Kirika, who was standing quietly next to her, seemingly wholly engrossed with staring at the floor. The diminutive girl was dressed in one of her favourite outfits consisting of a turquoise coloured top supported by two spaghetti straps, a short dark blue skirt, and finally a white parka. Kirika had lost most of the garments on her gruelling trek by foot to where France bordered Spain-the site of the Manor-but after her return to Paris with Mireille, the doting blonde had replaced the missing clothes on one of her first of countless shopping splurges for her partner. Kirika even had her adorable little pink shoes back… although Mireille had purchased a sturdy pair of black boots for the girl to wear sometimes, too-a professional assassin needed tough protective footwear when undertaking a contract. Nevertheless, Mireille liked how the pink slip-on shoes looked on Kirika's dainty feet. It would be all right to give her cute partner a bit of leeway in her choice of footwear now and then, especially since they weren't actively in 'the business' anymore.

Originally, Mireille had wanted to meet with Breffort by herself. However, as she should have expected, Kirika would have none of it. Mireille had strengthened her resolve to leave Kirika behind in the security of their home before telling her of her wishes, but under the taciturn girl's quiet-yet persistent-insistence the blonde had caved. Mireille didn't know whether it was intentional or not, but after informing her that she would be going by herself, Kirika had given her a hurt puppy dog expression of the likes the woman's resolve had been utterly defenceless against. And coupled with the girl speaking the blonde's name and nothing else in that special way of hers, Mireille's resolve had crumbled to nothing-the joint offensive had simply been too much to endure. Besides, even if Mireille had remained steadfast and forbade Kirika to come with her, the exasperatingly loyal girl would have in all probability tailed her anyway-blatantly mind you, until Mireille surrendered to letting her walk beside her. Kirika would have followed no matter what her older partner said.

So, Mireille reasoned, it was perhaps even better that she had 'allowed' Kirika to come with her. It was saving them both a lot of trouble. Yes, it was the truth.

Mireille's eyes became half-lidded as she directed an unnoticed dry look at Kirika, the girl standing with her hands in her parka's pockets, appearing as demure and innocent as ever. The Corsican let out a small sigh, her steely blue eyes losing their sardonic quality, turning a gentler shade. She was becoming a real softy… at least when it came to Kirika. She prayed that she hadn't made a dreadful mistake in letting her partner tag along with her, though. The threat of violence was always there when they left the safety of their apartment, but now, inside a building that belonged to Soldats, the threat had doubled-no, tripled. Mireille would make sure the meeting with Breffort finished quickly. The faster things were straightened out with him, the faster she and Kirika could return to their peaceful life… if it was still waiting for them. Mireille wouldn't give Breffort a chance to coerce them into a Soldats' machination or worse, into the powerful group's fold. Breffort had offered her an influential place in the society once before; there was no reason why he or the other high ranking officials of Soldats might not still harbour the desire to recruit her.

The noise of the elevator doors sliding open brought Mireille out of her thoughts, and with Kirika in tandem, she stepped out of the elevator and into the adjoining hallway, before proceeding in the direction of Breffort's office.

As Mireille and Kirika walked into the foyer of Breffort's office, two men dressed in grey suits relaxing on one of three black leather couches positioned around a coffee table inside perked up and turned their heads towards them. Mireille tensed slightly as they regarded her but closed the double doors she and Kirika had entered through behind her without hesitation before continuing to walk further into the room, outwardly appearing calm and cool, but inwardly a coiled spring ready to strike at a moment's notice. She had shot and killed the last two guards that had been stationed here during her first visit to the foyer; she wondered if their replacements knew that. But considering the mistrustful and cagey way the duo eyed her and Kirika, Mireille wouldn't be startled if they did. She wondered if the sentries also knew that she and her colleague were futhermore the Noir of ancient legend, or had been for a time at any rate. Perhaps that was the cause of their obvious apprehension… but it was doubtful. Mireille really didn't believe that the higher-ups of Soldats would reveal the genuine Noir's true identity to their lowly subordinates. They simply didn't need to know. And knowledge was power, with those top officials not apt to share either.

"He's expecting you," one of the men said, gesturing with a tilt of his head to a set of double doors over his shoulder, while not taking his eyes off Mireille or Kirika. In the meantime his companion sat stock still beside him, staring at the young women with a steady gaze that roamed periodically between the pair.

Mireille smiled thinly in response. The guards hadn't even so much as stirred from their seats to check them for weapons. Maybe her and Kirika's reputation as Noir had preceded them after all. Or it could be that the guards were just always edgy with everyone who crossed their paths; that attitude did make for a longer life in their line of work. Maybe they were in actual fact under direct orders from Breffort not to frisk Mireille and Kirika for arms. In any case Mireille was glad; she had never liked being felt up by strange men with wandering hands under the pretext of searching for concealed weapons. Although it rarely occurred-as a professional assassin Mireille typically avoided situations where suspicion could be laid on her, and that included walking into places where a physical pat down of her person was required.

Strolling unhurriedly past the chary-eyed sentries-whose gazes stuck to them like glue as they moved-Mireille and Kirika approached Breffort's doors, and, after a short forewarning knock courtesy of the Corsican, walked into the Soldats member's office.

Breffort looked up from where he was seated at his desk as Mireille and Kirika came into the room, putting down the fountain pen he had previously been writing with. Remy Breffort was a somewhat aged man, perhaps in his late fifties, with slicked back grey hair and attired in an expensive-looking charcoal grey suit of fine material and cut, painting an overall dapper exterior. Mireille hypothesised that he was a prominent individual in Soldats' echelons, perhaps even sitting on the chief council itself, if one existed. All the more reason to stay sharp and leave quickly. While the blonde had had dealings with Breffort in the past, it didn't mean she trusted him more than any other Soldats follower.

"Mireille Bouquet," Breffort greeted flatly in his rather gruff voice, speaking French. He cast his eyes to Kirika trailing at the rear of Mireille for a second, but then they returned to the woman. "I am pleased you have answered my summons. Come in. Sit down."

Mireille advanced into the richly decorated room with long, purposeful strides, before halting abruptly in front of two plush sofas facing a polished cherry wood coffee table. "That won't be necessary," she declared tersely as Kirika softly clicked shut the office's double doors, then positioned herself a couple of steps behind her partner. "The only reason I- *we*-" Mireille quickly corrected, "-are here is to assure you-and Soldats-that we were not responsible for killing your people." Mireille narrowed her eyes, clutching her handbag in front of her tightly with both hands. "Although I'll admit your constant messages did try my patience…." she added hotly under her breath. "While the word may be that Noir is taking the blame for the car bombing outside the Aux Villes Du Nord café, it was not we." The woman then smirked faintly, but the smile held more ice than warmth. "We prefer more… shall we say, elegant methods of disposing of people." Mireille glanced over her shoulder at Kirika, her smile now turning fond, just for the cute girl. "Well, one of us does," she amended rather teasingly, recalling her stoic partner's brutal yet effective techniques at ending lives.

Kirika, exhibiting her aforementioned stoicism, didn't react to the jibe bar an infinitesimal movement of her lips.

Breffort simply looked at Mireille levelly for several moments. Then, after heaving a weary sigh, he stood up from his chair and hobbled out from behind his desk, leaning the majority of his weight on his peculiar cane topped with what loosely resembled a golden hawk's head. "Noir…" he mumbled to himself, looking away from Mireille and Kirika. "I had hoped it was merely a rumour, but now…." Breffort sighed once again and shook his head slightly, before returning his attention to Mireille. "The situation has become even worse than I had first believed. It would be wise if you and your partner listen to what I have to say," he recommended with some resignation.

"I don't think so," Mireille said coldly and with barely veiled enmity beneath her words, no smiles of any sort now. "We don't want to know what the 'situation' is." There was no way she was going to let Breffort get them involved in whatever was going on. Mireille had already informed the man that neither she nor Kirika were accountable for the deaths of the two Soldats agents-their business with him was finished. Mireille and Kirika could go back to their quiet life oblivious to whatever Breffort's and Soldats' problems were, and be happier for it. "We're done here," the Corsican assassin stated firmly, turning to go.

"If the title of Noir is truly being used then this concerns you too," Breffort said to Mireille's retreating back. "You *and* your partner," he continued in a softer tone, someway knowing how the inclusion of Kirika would affect the woman's mindset. "It is the reason why I've been trying to contact you of late."

Mireille stopped dead in her tracks when her partner was mentioned. Curse Breffort! She wondered irritably if he had agents spying on how she and Kirika interacted with each other now. Although, Breffort had been present when Mireille and Kirika had walked out of the Manor together, the sole survivors of a battle against Altena and her enclave. Perhaps the woman's decision to follow after and in turn save Kirika then had been enough for him to go on.

Mireille turned back and looked at Kirika, who hadn't moved. The girl met her gaze wordlessly and then, to the blonde's dismay, she walked slowly over to one of the sofas. "Kirika…" Mireille whispered in consternation and surprise.

With Kirika's choice made, there was little Mireille could do but staunchly stand by her, regardless of how much she wished the withdrawn girl had followed her lead like she normally did. As Kirika took a seat on the sofa, Mireille reluctantly did likewise, sitting primly next to her colleague and laying her handbag on her lap. She did her best not to slouch despondently. Her and Kirika's peaceful way of life was giving its final death rattle.

Breffort took a brief moment to fetch a manila folder out from one of his desk drawers, and then limped over to the other, vacant, sofa across from Mireille and Kirika before seating himself in it, releasing a tired breath of air. He propped his cane against one of the sofa's arms and then opened the dossier in his hands.

"We believe," Breffort began, and Mireille had no doubt in her mind who exactly 'we' was referring to, "that this man, Ryosuke Ishinomori, is one of those responsible for the act of aggression against us yesterday." Breffort laid out a number of photographs he had retrieved from the folder on the table in front of Mireille and Kirika, placing them down one after the other, side by side in a neat row.

Mireille leaned forwards on the sofa, peering at the mix of colour and black and white photos of assorted sizes, before picking one up and examining it, her interest piqued despite herself. Clearly surveillance specialists-who were highly likely to also be members of Soldats-had taken them. The colour picture in Mireille's hands was of an Asian man who looked to be in his mid twenties, standing a couple of feet from a black limousine and seemingly occupied with someone or something outside of the snapshot, and consequently was apparently oblivious to being spied upon and photographed. Ryosuke Ishinomori was a tall individual, at least six foot if the limousine in the background was any measure, and possessed a slim build. Then again, Mireille couldn't be certain of that since he wore a long coat of the darkest black. It was buckled from his neck to his waist with gunmetal grey clasps and fell in two tails to the tops of his ankles, and as a result, hid most of his similarly gloomily attired body from view. The coat had a faint sheen to it that was visible even in the photo, like it was made of some sort of glossy substance, perhaps leather. Its collar was cut straight and stood up stiffly to Ishinomori's mouth, partially obscuring his features. But Mireille could make out enough. Ishinomori would have been rather handsome if his face hadn't been gaunt and his expression stony. Dark circles ringed his lifeless violet, almost purple, eyes, made doubly more noticeable by his deathly pale complexion. Stark white hair hung to his shoulders, but fanned out in a series of spikes away from his head just before actually touching them.

All in all the general air of Ryosuke Ishinomori, even from a mere photograph alone, touted that he was a very dangerous and cold individual… but not of the type that Mireille hadn't dealt with before. There were many people who held themselves in such repute in the criminal world-and those in the average world too, for that matter-arrogant men and women who felt themselves superior to others and acted accordingly. Fools who thought of themselves above their customarily meagre castes. Mireille had encountered their like many, many times. They were often the ones who begged for their lives before she ended them. She would have to encounter Ishinomori in person before she could determine if he shared those other wannabes' characteristics, or if he actually had the ability to back up his aplomb.

As Mireille was studying the picture, a flash of memory manifested in her mind's eye, a memory from the day before. She inhaled sharply and frowned hard at the man in the photo. Shoulder length stark white hair and a long jet-black coat…. It was the man she had bumped into on the street outside the café yesterday, right before the Soldats sedan was turned into a hunk of flaming scrap metal. Mireille should have recognised him sooner. He must have been there to trigger the car bomb remotely himself. How very brazen, she thought disdainfully.

Mireille spared a glance at Kirika to her left, and saw the girl impassively scrutinising another photograph of Ishinomori, this particular one of him sitting at a bar in a restaurant, dressed much like he had been in the picture she had been looking at and with the same emotionless countenance. The shop signs caught in the foreground of the black and white photo were written in what looked like Japanese characters-it must have been shot in Japan. Well, Ryosuke Ishinomori did appear to hail from the country.

Kirika's eyes turned to meet Mireille's for a moment at the woman's look, but then Breffort started talking again, demanding both her and her partner's full attention.

"Ishinomori was spotted recently in Paris accompanied by his usual associate, one Wen-Sung Hsu; a man also known as Vincent Hsu," Breffort revealed, placing another set of snapshots on the coffee table, under the first collection.

Mireille and Kirika moved at the same time, each reaching for a surveillance photograph of the second bombing suspect. At first glance Mireille thought that Breffort had been mistaken about Hsu's gender, but after closer inspection she realised he was simply a remarkably beautiful man. Truly Vincent Hsu could have been mistaken for a woman. If Mireille were so inclined that way she might have even been attracted to him. But as it was, she preferred the authentic thing. She could accept no substitutes, regardless of how feminine a man appeared.

With a medium-to-small build and long lustrous black hair, Hsu was the exact opposite of his older-looking partner Ishinomori, even more so with the broad smile plastered on his almost flawless face; the solitary blemish a mole by the right side of his mouth. The picture Mireille had chosen was in full colour displaying Hsu carousing in what looked to be a seedy nightclub somewhere, with his arms around two pretty yet whorishly dressed women who the Corsican could practically visualise simpering. The enchanting man who had won their affections-and seemed to certainly be enjoying them-was clad in a black suit and tie along with a correspondingly coloured shirt, matching his Japanese associate's fashion sense. However, Hsu wore his clothing well, holding himself in a suave but laid-back manner that shone through even the static photo in Mireille's hand. His eyes were pools of enrapturing liquid amber, captivating in their soft exquisiteness, while his ebony locks were tied loosely in a ponytail at the nape of his neck and hung over one shoulder, reaching his waist. A series of short strips made of a black velvet-like material were wrapped around Hsu's ponytail, keeping the long tresses neatly together, and a few centimetres from the tail's bottom a dark cord was tied, producing a tuft of hair at the ponytail's end. It was hard to imagine a person with such a jovial and captivating look was paired with the likes of the dour Ryosuke Ishinomori. But then appearances could all too easily be deceiving. Mireille doubted the casual observer would think Kirika was anything more than an average girl by merely looking at her.

"Both men have become significantly prominent players in the Asia-Pacific region, rising from relative obscurity from small gang-related syndicates," Breffort went on while Mireille and her darkhaired companion studied the snapshots. "Perhaps you have heard of them…?" he posed to the well-known and respected Corsican assassin.

"I don't visit that area of the world often," Mireille replied in an absent mumble, her interest focused primarily on the picture of Hsu. "Europe is my traditional playground."

"Of course," Breffort said somewhat contritely, before clearing his throat and resuming his report. "Alone, Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu make equally formidable foes," he said, impassively watching Mireille and Kirika continue to look over the photos of the duo. "But together…." The grey-haired man directed an unwavering gaze at Mireille, the woman having looked up at his noticeable pause. "Together, they are arguably worthy of Noir's heritage."

Mireille answered Breffort's gaze with a dispassionate and level look, clearly unimpressed and unafraid.

She then exhaled with exaggerated heaviness, and belligerently tossed the photograph she had been examining back onto the coffee table's shiny surface, her patience at its end. "This is all *very* interesting," she said sarcastically, "but will there be a point to any of this soon? All you've shown us is two *supposedly* dangerous men who killed two of your Soldats lapdogs. I don't see what they have to do with myself or Kirika beyond their use of the name, Noir."

Breffort was silent for a moment, during which Mireille was tempted to take Kirika and leave already, but then the Soldats official spoke once again.

"When I learned Ishinomori and Hsu had appeared in Paris, I immediately assigned two agents to keep watch over their activities, the same men who I used as convenient one-time couriers to deliver my message to you."

Mireille raised a single elegant blonde eyebrow at this.

Seeing the woman's questioning expression, Breffort explained. "It is a rarity when they leave the Eastern hemisphere. Especially with… circumstances as they are over there at present." Noticing Mireille's now even greater quizzical look, Breffort held up at hand, forestalling any inquiries. "I'll explain in due time. It was pure coincidence that my message was delivered to you at the precise time Ishinomori and Hsu decided to take the opportunity to dispose of my men." His eyes moved to Kirika for a fraction of a second, who was still absorbed with looking at photos, and then went back to Mireille. "I hope neither of you were injured in the ensuing blast."

"No," Mireille said dryly, recalling her painful flight through the café's glass door. "Although your concern is touching," she couldn't help adding condescendingly.

Undeterred by the blonde's tone, Breffort continued, albeit with a slight, almost inaudible sigh beforehand. "I don't know how they discovered they were being observed by Soldats-my agents must have become careless-but it's moot now. Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu are only the hands of a larger menace. The real threat is this woman-" Breffort laid a newspaper clipping on top of the several pictures on the table. "-Kaede Ishinomori, Ryosuke's younger sister. He and Hsu are merely her operatives. *She* is the true danger."

Mireille sighed in annoyance and picked up the newspaper clipping. Written in Japanese, the article was obviously taken from a Japanese publication. The accompanying colour picture for the report was focused on a young woman dressed in a sensible yet stylish black pantsuit, shirt, and tie combination, outside of what resembled a courthouse. She was surrounded by a flood of people, most of them journalist types. An escort consisting of five women and two men stood out in the crowd, however, appearing to be with the young woman-who was evidently Kaede Ishinomori-most likely her bodyguards and lawyers. Mireille wasn't sure what the report was about-she could speak Japanese well, but reading it was a different matter entirely-but it was clear even to her that Kaede Ishinomori was in some trouble with the law; trouble big enough to warrant media coverage.

Kaede shared some resemblance to her brother, beyond their affinity for the colour black. While definitely not as tall as him, she did have the same coloured hair and complexion and slender frame. Her snow white hair was cut quite short and tapered to the nape of her neck, and a multitude of bangs hung over her eyes, utterly concealing them from view. Mireille wondered how the woman walked around without knocking into things. While her hair obscured a good deal of her features, what the assassin could see showed her that Kaede was an attractive woman. A ghost of a smile was affixed to Kaede's face; a smug and rather alluring smile, like she knew something very special and important that everyone else did not. Mireille had a feeling that smile could turn into a cold and sinister rictus in a heartbeat.

"She's being accused of drug trafficking and possession with intent to sell," Kirika said softly to Mireille in Japanese, having scooted close to her partner to read the news article also. "It says that the key witness is still missing after his disappearance from protective custody shortly after her arraignment."

Mireille nodded and made a sound of understanding, peering at the newspaper clipping even more closely, as if by now knowing what it said made the Japanese characters become suddenly decipherable to her.

"That is correct," Breffort said, overhearing and understanding Kirika's helpful translation, even though it wasn't spoken in French. Mireille found herself disliking him just a little bit more. "Kaede Ishinomori is the CEO and majority shareholder of Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals, a drug research, development, and manufacturing company based predominantly in Asia, but with many other subsidiaries throughout the world. In the past it was a legitimate business, but now it is essentially a front for the production and shipment of illegal substances-including narcotics and the rare chemical weapon. She inherited it-and many other assets-from her mother after she passed away during an altercation with some unforgiving and impetuous 'business rivals'." Breffort paused for a second, causing Mireille and Kirika to look up from the news article. "Hikaru Ishinomori was Soldats, and a sympathiser with Altena's beliefs; she held a prominent place in Altena's splinter group. She was killed before Le Grand Retour was brought to fruition, however."

"Soldats. Why am I not surprised," Mireille sneered, dropping the newspaper clipping on the coffee table in front of her. "That would make Kaede Ishinomori and all of her associates Soldats members too, correct?"

"Indeed," Breffort confirmed, before noticeably hesitating. "But…" he went on, a little reluctantly, "Kaede Ishinomori is not like her mother. Hikaru Ishinomori may have shared Altena's views, but she was Soldats through and through. But her daughter… her daughter thinks differently. She is too ambitious; she does not follow the dictates of Soldats. She expands the Ishinomori Empire too recklessly and impudently uses her ties to the society, cowing criminal and lawful organisations alike with our age-old name. She threatens to expose us with her carelessness. This is… unacceptable."

Mireille smirked. So that was the reason Breffort had had agents on Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu. Now they were finally getting somewhere. It seemed that a loose cannon as it were, one with sizable strength and, if that wasn't enough, links to Altena, had emerged in Soldats; which was making the high-ranking old men of the clandestine group nervous. And perhaps rightfully so. Soldats did their work from the shadows; they always had. To be revealed from those shadows, bare to the world….

Mireille's smirk grew. It must be a very daunting notion to Breffort and his little friends. She was suddenly rather pleased she had stayed to hear what he'd had to say.

"Go on…" Mireille prompted a little smugly, although she did try to keep her voice even. She rested back in the sofa and crossed her legs, feeling a great deal more relaxed now.

Breffort merely stared at the composed blonde woman for a moment, but under her unrelenting conceited smile and level gaze, sighed softly and then quickly yielded, telling all.

"I have been charged by the High Council of Soldats with the task of handling this… problem. Discreetly, however. To openly oppose any major force belonging to Soldats is just not done; it would lead to disastrous results. It is the same reason why we did not simply quash Altena's faction with our own forces at the very beginning she made her intentions of initiating Le Grand Retour clear. There would have been open war in the streets; men and women of Soldats with their own cells and unique, often conflicting beliefs are spread everywhere, all over the globe. Exposure would have been all but unavoidable."

Breffort sighed once more and shook his head a fraction, looking away from Mireille. "But so far my efforts have all been for naught-I am simply sending Soldats men to their deaths. Ryosuke Ishinomori… Vincent Hsu… they are Kaede Ishinomori's 'Black Hands'; they are truly impressive combatants. Indeed, if the two are really using the name of Noir…." Breffort turned his head back to Mireille, the depths of his eyes looking somewhat strained. "I believe Kaede knows that the majority of Soldats is in opposition to her, but she also knows Soldats won't make a direct move against her either. And so we do a dance. I attack covertly with small surgical strikes, and she retaliates with-while not quite equal-judiciousness. And thus, it goes on until one of us missteps." Breffort reached up and smoothed back his grey hair with one hand. "It is a tiring ballet," he admitted wearily.

"Why not just wait for her trial?" Mireille asked a bit absently, gesturing with a crook of her finger towards the newspaper clipping on the coffee table. "She may be convicted; it would solve everything quite nicely. Cut off a snake's head, and normally the remaining body dies in time."

"Do you not think Kaede has not already assured that she will be acquitted on all charges?" Breffort said, a hint of an edge in his voice. "She has already utilised her two Hands to make the only damning witness against her disappear from the public eye. He was one of her own circle, I believe. He will not pass from this life easy… or slowly."

"Well then, it looks like you're in a bit of a quandary," Mireille said, paying no heed to the Soldats man's slightly hard tone. "However, the way I see it, Kaede and her 'Hands' are your problem. Not ours."

"Hmph. Do you really believe that?" Breffort said in his usual monotone. "When I learned that Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu were possibly aspiring to become Noir, I thought it shrewd to contact you. To me, it is clear that Kaede has learned of Soldats legendary Black Hands and has modelled her two top killers in Noir's image-or at least, is attempting too. How long do you think it will take her to discover that the true Noir is living here in Paris, alive and well? What do you think she-"

Breffort's words were cut off as Mireille abruptly stood up, her face twisted into an expression of loathing. Kirika looked up at her from where she still sat, her countenance unreadable.

"We are *not* Noir," Mireille declared angrily, all her prior mild amusement now vanished from her voice and features. "Perhaps we were once, but no longer. We are not part of Soldats-we never will be. We are outsiders in your little… power struggle. The unruly child in your organisation is your own to curb. *Alone*" The assassin turned sharply to Kirika, motioning for her to rise with a flick of her hand. "Come on, Kirika," she snapped, "we're leaving."

Breffort was trying to suck them into a Soldats plot as Mireille had previously suspected, although his attempt had been carried out in a subtle way; not until the end had he revealed the true purpose of this meeting. But it was crystal clear now what the real reasons behind it and his messages were. Breffort wanted to recruit Mireille and Kirika to help him deal with a rogue Soldats member who had delusions of grandeur. He wanted to recruit them into Soldats employ. Never. Mireille would never let that happen.

Mireille took two steps towards the doors of the office, but when she didn't hear her partner's footsteps following her, she turned irritably back to find the girl still on the sofa. "Kirika!" she chastised strictly, causing her introverted colleague to instantly leap up from her seat and trot over to her.

As Mireille, with Kirika now a step behind her, proceeded towards the doors once again, Breffort unwelcomely strived a final time to compel the woman to rally to his cause. "You can't remain passive in this," he said to Mireille's back, making the blonde slow her pace in spite of herself. "Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu are here, in Paris, when by all rights they should be near Kaede, especially with her trial date coming up in less than two weeks. It is strange she has sent them here…."

"What are you saying?" Mireille said bitingly without turning, her hand on one of office's door handles, on the verge of leaving. Of escaping.

"There can be only one true Noir," Breffort said from the sofa, the words freezing the Corsican's heart. "You know this. While the motives for Ishinomori and Hsu's appearance in Paris are unknown to me, there is considerable likelihood it is to locate you… and your partner…." He paused for effect, but Mireille remained silent. "You claim that you and your partner are not Noir, but that won't matter to her. Or to them. Kaede Ishinomori seems to want her own version of Noir, which means her sights are set on you. You and your partner will be hunted, if you both aren't being already. You can either wait until Ishinomori and Hsu find you in another café, or you can find them first. In the end, it is still your own choice to make."

Mireille lowered her head, the weight of Breffort's words resting heavily on her slim shoulders. Could she go back to her quiet life with Kirika, now knowing that it could be destroyed at any moment? But that had always been a peril Mireille was aware of. Except now it would be like sticking her head in the sand, waiting for a nightmare to raze their dream of a peaceful existence. A nightmare she knew would sooner or later rear its head. The question was, did she wait for the nightmare to come to her and Kirika? Or did she charge ahead, down the black path, and confront it directly? Either way, her and her partner's quiet life would come to an end.

Mireille looked at Kirika. She looked back at her, her face typically impassive. The blonde wondered what she wanted to do. Kirika had to have known that this day would come eventually. Mireille's shoulders slumped and her expression fell. She had accepted that she would inevitably travel the black path once again, but Kirika….

"Alright," Mireille conceded, her voice containing a measure of hoarseness. "You've convinced me." She turned back around to Breffort. As she had anticipated, his face held no trace of triumph at his victory. He wasn't the type to gloat. "I expect you'll be providing us with Soldats aid?" At least she and Kirika wouldn't have to handle Ryosuke and Vincent alone. Two people who would knowingly attack Soldats agents in spite of the repercussions it would entail, and do it by themselves with no backup, were two people who were definitely exceedingly formidable. Or exceedingly daring. Regardless, any help Breffort could give would be most welcome in Mireille's opinion. Of course, Ryosuke and Vincent weren't the only two people in the world who had willingly attacked and killed Soldats agents….

"Unfortunately, my assistance will be limited," Breffort said, eliciting a scowl from Mireille. She should have predicted as much. "You said it yourself; you and your partner are not part of Soldats. There are many High Council members who see you as an enemy of Soldats, albeit a sleeping one. If they even found out about this meeting the ramifications for myself would be fatal. No, I'm afraid you will be largely on your own."

"Then what 'limited assistance' can you provide?" Mireille said contemptuously.

Breffort held up the manila folder in his hand. Terrific.

"Information mainly," he clarified. "But perhaps more than that in the future. Although I will have to be careful."

Mireille sighed deeply. So this was it. The black path was calling her name… and Kirika's as well. She couldn't help but feel it would be even more difficult to veer away from it this time around. Darkness had caught them once again in its grasp, and it was a force that wasn't apt to let anybody go when they wanted to. *If* they wanted to.

With the weight inside her handbag more noticeable than ever, Mireille walked slowly back to Breffort and reached out to take the folder from his grasp. She had made her choice. The quicker they disposed of Ryosuke and Vincent, the better chance she and Kirika had of freeing themselves from the course of the black path of murder... a course that always ended in death for its travellers. With Kaede's 'Noir' dead, Mireille and Kirika would be released from her and Breffort's intrigues… presumably. At any rate, it was the wisest approach for the moment.

As Mireille took a hold of the folder, she met Breffort's greyish eyes with her own blue ones. She knew not to entirely trust the man. He was Soldats. Even if their objectives were the same, as they had been during their previous dealings concerning Altena, it wasn't like they were friends. They were more like business partners, if anything. Mireille reminded herself once again to stay on guard… particularly against Breffort.

"And so the sleeping lions awaken…." Breffort whispered softly as he let go of the folder.

* * *

Kirika Yuumura followed Mireille into their apartment and quietly shut the door behind them, before securely locking its deadbolt. The trip back home had been made in silence, not a single word exchanged between either of them. While once, in the past, that in itself would not have been out of the ordinary, these days Mireille was considerably more talkative, frequently chatting to Kirika about a wide variety of topics that happened to take her fancy at the time. For the most part Kirika merely listened to the woman, only providing her own input when required-she was not much for talking. But she enjoyed simply listening to Mireille's opinions on things, and also the sound of her pleasant, articulate voice. It was comforting to Kirika. When Mireille spoke often and contentedly, it made Kirika feel that everything was okay in the world, and that her partner was at ease. It put her at ease too.

But now it was like it had all reverted back to several months earlier, when silence was Kirika and Mireille's constant companion. Kirika's silence was of course nothing new, but when Mireille was quiet it characteristically meant she was thinking hard about something… or was worried about something. More likely worried in this case. But not nervous, no, Mireille never became nervous no matter what peril or trial she was up against... with a few exceptions. She did get nervous around Kirika herself on occasion. The darkhaired girl seemed to easily fluster Mireille for some reason.

Kirika rested back against a wall in the living room and gazed up at the ceiling as Mireille walked over to the billiard table, depositing on it the manila dossier containing the information on their new enemies, along with her handbag, which landed with a dull clunk. Kirika knew what Mireille was worried about. She knew what the latest developments meant.

Kirika's eyelids drooped a little, her reddish-brown eyes becoming sad. Their peaceful time together seemed so short, now. Kirika had become accustomed to simply living each day of her life as it came with Mireille. It had been like she was a normal girl and that her previous life as an assassin had happened to someone else-just a bad, distant memory; a dream. Or rather a nightmare. Truly, she had almost forgotten. Almost.

But soon Kirika and Mireille would be fighting once again. Soon their lives would be filled with violence, with bloodshed, with murder… with sins. They would be filled with danger too, and their very lives would be put at risk, but Kirika had never feared for her own personal safety. She rarely felt the emotion, fear. Except when it concerned her older partner. Mireille's personal safety was a whole other story. Kirika always worried about the woman's wellbeing; she had done so nearly ever since they first met. Mireille was a very capable assassin, but that didn't make her invulnerable. And now that they were heading back into a life of killing, and would be pitched against two purportedly skilled rivals, Kirika's fear for Mireille had increased tenfold. If the unimaginable were to occur, if Mireille were to somehow leave her… Kirika didn't think she would survive for long afterwards.

Mireille was literally everything to Kirika-she was utterly vital to the girl's continued existence and happiness. The woman was the only person she really knew, her only friend, her only family. Kirika felt something for Mireille she had experienced with no other person before. She felt love; it was the only word she knew that could possibly describe the feeling. Kirika loved Mireille deeply, with absolutely everything she was. She had for a long time. And Mireille felt the same way; the girl knew it to be true. Mireille may not be very forthcoming about her feelings, but Kirika was certain she did. Kirika could clearly see the changes in her partner's behaviour towards her. She only wished Mireille would be more open about her love. Kirika didn't really know much about how people who loved each other acted, but she knew enough to realise Mireille held herself back somewhat. She wasn't sure why the blonde did. But for the moment, it didn't really matter that much to Kirika. Just being with Mireille virtually every hour of every day was more than enough for her to be content.

At the bottom of her field of vision Kirika could make out Mireille looking at her rather absorbedly while leaning against the side of the billiard table with one hand. Kirika could tell she was internally debating with herself about something. She knew Mireille thought she wouldn't notice her pensive expression, what with the girl's attention seemingly riveted to the ceiling. But Kirika noticed almost everything when it concerned Mireille, even if her partner tried to hide things from her. She never brought it up of course, not unless it was really important. Mireille would probably deny it anyway, and then she would become uncomfortable around Kirika… more so. For example, the perceptive girl knew they were still getting contract offers from across most of Europe, sent via email, for weeks now. Mireille quickly closed the email program whenever she made her presence known, and then afterwards behaved a little guiltily. But Kirika wasn't stupid or blind. However, she didn't resent her partner for keeping things from her, either. Mireille was just doing what she thought was best. It made Kirika happy in a way, happy that Mireille felt the need to do such things for her.

Apparently coming to a decision, Mireille put on a rather weak smile and straightened her posture, before opening her mouth to speak. "Kirika," she said, and the girl in question lowered her gaze from the ceiling and looked into the blonde's blue eyes. For some reason this made Mireille squirm, although nearly imperceptibly-Kirika doubted anybody but her would have noticed the action. "I have something for you," the woman continued quietly, looking away from Kirika to the billiard table's green felt surface. "I acquired a new one about a week after we arrived home," she explained as she crouched down beside the table and began running one hand underneath it, searching for something. "It was just a precautionary measure," Mireille said, turning her head back to a mute and motionless Kirika. "Ah, there."

Mireille stood up, and held in her hand was something that made Kirika's heart clench. A gun. A Beretta M1934 Commercial, to be exact. A firearm that Kirika had wielded with deadly proficiency for most of her young life… and had taken countless lives with. The mere sight of the weapon caused a swarm of repressed memories to resurface, all of them unwanted… and awful.

And there was a fear welling up too, the other fear alongside Mireille's safety, the second exception. A seed of darkness had awakened inside Kirika during her journey to the Manor, a seed of darkness that had bloomed into a black, bloated flower, putrid with poison and disease. And it still resided inside of her. Her other self. The one who had no name. The one who had attacked Mireille, the woman she loved, with genuine intent to kill her without mercy or hesitation-Kirika's darkness. Kirika's fear was that with giving in to violence her darkness would resurface again; she would lose herself again. Returning to her normal self that time at the ancient colosseum by the Manor had taken a supreme effort. Without Mireille provoking her old memories to re-emerge, Kirika believed she would have stayed lost, locked away in a part of her mind with the darkness as the warden. And even then if Mireille's mother, Odette Bouquet, hadn't planted a ray of light to fight that darkness inside of her before Kirika had claimed her life… in all probability Mireille would be dead and Kirika and Chloe would be Noir, under Altena's control.

"It's clean, naturally," Mireille assured Kirika softly, oblivious to the taciturn girl's internal discord. "Untraceable." She pulled the grey duct tape that had held the gun in its hiding spot under the billiard table off of the weapon, and after balling it up, idly tossed it beside the manila folder and her handbag where her own gun resided.

Gripping the Beretta by its barrel, Mireille held out the lethal firearm towards Kirika, albeit with a shade of reluctance. The woman's face was stony, but she quickly forced a reassuring though wan smile. It did little to comfort Kirika, and she believed Mireille knew that too, but had made the effort anyway. It was so unlike those early days. Kirika wondered if things like that would stay the same, despite the changes that indisputably would now occur in their lives.

With one steady but clammy hand, Kirika reached out to take the proffered gun. However, before she could, a sudden bolt in her mind conjured up the image of Altena when she was a young woman, with herself but a child, extending the same make and kind of weapon to her in an identical fashion. The first time Kirika had held a gun. The image was followed in a flash by a second, this one so like the first, but years later, with both participants older. But much the same.

Kirika's hand froze in mid motion, and it began to tremble-only minutely, hardly visible, but it did. She stared at the gun held out by her partner with wide, vacant eyes. The hand clenching her heart squeezed tighter.

"Kirika?" Mireille inquired, the concern plain in her voice.

The sound of Mireille's voice brought Kirika back to the present, freeing her from the bitter, still disjointed memories of the past. She simply blinked and mentally shook off the feeling she was experiencing. Mireille was not Altena. It was different. It was.

Gingerly, as if with reverence but in reality with apprehension, Kirika took the Beretta from Mireille's grasp. It was heavier than she remembered. The weight told her it was fully loaded, however the darkhaired girl didn't think that was responsible for the sense of extra burden. The metal was cold in her grip and it chilled her skin, freezing her hand before the cool sensation crept gradually up her arm. Kirika felt something stir inside of herself. The darkness. It knew. It knew that Kirika Yuumura held her forced choice of weapon once again, her tool of murder and sin. It knew she would wield the gun and kill again. It was inevitable.

The hand Kirika held the weapon in suddenly looked as black as night in her eyes. Black with sin. Yes… she would inexorably be committing more sins too. Kirika had had a small hope that some of the sins that soiled her hands and blackened her soul had been burnt away to nothing along with her Beretta when it had been destroyed in the lava pool below the Manor. But of course it was a fantasy. Those sins were Kirika's alone, not the gun's. Not a simple tool's. She would always carry them with her. As she should.

"There's more clips and bullets on the top shelf of the wardrobe," Mireille informed Kirika, watching her stare at the gun in her small hands, the girl apparently wholly enthralled. "The leftovers from days gone by." The woman fidgeted uneasily for several moments, and then hugged herself, looking away from Kirika and down at the wooden floorboards of the room. "It's getting late," she whispered. "I think I'll take a shower. I feel… dirty." Mireille lingered for a few more seconds, but then turned away from the sight of Kirika and her new gun, proceeding at a brisk gait for the bedroom.

Kirika slipped the small Beretta into the right pocket of her parka, leaving it there. Instantly the warmth flooded back into her hand, like the pricking of many needles in her skin. The darkness inside her retreated back to the bleak caverns of her mind, back to where it slept. No… it slept no longer. It lurked now, waiting. It had retreated, but not completely. The cold touch of a gun-its gun-had emboldened it. But for now, it was kept at bay. Kirika wondered though. She wondered how long it would be. She and Mireille would be fighting once again. And Kirika doubted the two men they would be hunting would give them any quarter. It was only a matter of time until the darkness gained strength and tried to take control over her once more. When that moment came, Kirika was unsure if she would have the willpower to stop it.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

This was basically a new character introduction chapter. More information on the two members of the 'male Noir' will be revealed next chapter. There are more new characters still to be introduced, but they won't show up until later parts.

Kirika in her standard outfit but with combat boots was inspired by the image of her on the cover of the Noir CD single, Coppelia's Coffin, sung by Ali Project.

Ryosuke and Vincent are your typical anime bishounen types. ^_^ Kaede has the 'hair-covering-the-eyes' thing that some mysterious anime characters have (e.g. Luna Inverse from Slayers).

Oh, and I hope I got the legal mumbo-jumbo right. I'm not a law student. ^_^;


	3. The Calm Before a Storm

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The third chapter. No action yet….

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 3 - The Calm Before A Storm

Mireille released a tired sigh and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes. She was seated at the billiard table that doubled as a desk in her apartment, going over all the data Breffort's folder had contained on their new enemies, and in turn doing some research of her own via the Internet, gathering what accessible information on the three individuals she could… which, incidentally, hadn't been very much at all, especially on the topics of Ryosuke and Vincent. She had been staring at her PC's glowing monitor and reading a host of documents and newspaper clippings until late last night before she had resumed again early this morning. The time now was edging towards afternoon. Mireille felt worn-out. She had become too out of practice at inspecting assignment details and then verifying their credibility, as well as doing her own limited investigation of the targets. But the chores were necessary pains-it wasn't just because her and Kirika's 'employer' was Soldats; a professional assassin who trusted their employer implicitly should not claim to be a professional at all.

The contents of Breffort's dossier were spread out all over the billiard table's green felt surface, lying in amongst numbered pool balls painted in a variety of colours related to the game. Mireille sometimes brought the balls out to idly amuse herself with while she performed the preliminary tasks required before an assignment could be undertaken. Already most of the corner pockets of the table were filled to capacity with the polished spheres; the blonde woman had been working for some time, after all.

Newspaper articles both photocopied and original, and all printed in Japanese, littered the table, along with innumerable pages of typed documents which gave detailed background assessments on Kaede and her two cohorts, Ryosuke and Vincent, and additionally recounted the history of their activities in the world, ranging from early in their lives when they were but children, until the present date. Mireille hadn't been able to read the newspaper clippings and facsimiles, but she could usually get the gist of most of the articles by looking at their accompanying pictures, if the story in question had one. Nearly all were on Kaede Ishinomori or her departed mother, Hikaru Ishinomori, and either about their family business, Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals; the murder of Hikaru; or dated more recently, Kaede's upcoming court case. Of course Mireille couldn't understand a word of any news report, which was mildly frustrating to say the least, even with pictures to look at. She would have to get Kirika to help her in that respect later.

Mireille placed her arms on the armrests of her chair and skimmed her eyes over the dozens of papers arranged haphazardly before her on the billiard table. Her gaze eventually fell on one of the photos of Ryosuke Ishinomori-the man, like in all of his pictures, decked out in a long black overcoat. The enclosed report on Ryosuke-thankfully penned in French-stated that he was twenty-six years old, and was born in Yokohama, Japan, to the prosperous Ishinomori family-a family that held strong ties to the covert group, Soldats, and had done so over a decade. But despite being the first born of a rich lineage, it was written that shortly after his father's-Shinichi Ishinomori's-demise under suspicious circumstances, a teenage Ryosuke cut all connections to his family-with the sole exception of his sister-abandoning private schools and sizable wealth alike for unknown reasons. He then disappeared totally from the Soldats radar for several months-a feat that was notable in itself-before popping up again in the ranks of the Kanagawa Kotetsu yakuza, a moderately sized organised crime group based in his home city of Yokohama. It was within that criminal syndicate he remained for a number of years, gradually rising higher in the clan's hierarchy, gaining respect and power, until his sister, Kaede, recalled him to the Ishinomori family's embrace after their mother's passing and Kaede's subsequent inheritance of the empire. Strangely, Ryosuke did so immediately, deserting his yakuza brothers without looking back. And stranger still, the Kanagawa Kotetsu let him without any reprisals whatsoever. The report went on to say Ryosuke was still looked upon in a favourable light by the yakuza clan, and as a result it was suspected the group had been swallowed into Kaede's pseudo Soldats fold. Indeed, it was recently rumoured that the Kanagawa Kotetsu had been disbanded.

Mireille ran the fingers of one hand through her blonde locks and then transferred her eyes to a photograph of Ryosuke's partner. The document on Vincent Hsu, or rather, Wen-Sung Hsu, reported that he was twenty-four years of age, and born in Hong Kong. Raised in obscurity in a Catholic boarding school as an orphan and given a Christian name, Vincent purportedly fell into the Luen Kung Lok triad at a young age, engaging in disreputable but petty misdeeds on the streets spanning from assault and battery to extortion and burglary, a few of which he spent some time in jail for during his youth. However, in spite of his early setbacks, he soon achieved the rank of 'Straw Sandal' in the triad, becoming the liaison between the Luen Kung Lok and more than a few yakuza clans overseas in Japan. Soldats presumed that was how Vincent and Ryosuke had met; during one of the meetings between members of the Luen Kung Lok triad and the Kanagawa Kotetsu yakuza, arranged and mediated by the fine-looking man. After several such meetings, Vincent eventually stayed in Japan with Ryosuke and the Kanagawa Kotetsu, posing as the resident contact between the yakuza clan and the triad he belonged to. When Kaede summoned her older brother to her side, Vincent was said to have joined him with almost the same fervour.

The final thorough report included in Breffort's folder was on twenty-five year old Yokohama-born Kaede Ishinomori herself, which Mireille had studied very carefully like the other two before it. Following her brother's vanishing act after their father's death, Kaede remained with her mother for a time, but soon left her side to unite with Ryosuke as a member of the Kanagawa Kotetsu yakuza clan, serving with them as a truly brutal enforcer. It wasn't until Hikaru Ishinomori's murder that Kaede left the clan to take the reins of her family's empire, bringing her brother and his partner with her shortly afterwards. Before long she started aggressively expanding her newly reaped domain and consequently aggravating Soldats with her brazen conquests.

Oddly, Hikaru Ishinomori left the entire family's fortune to her daughter in her Will rather than to her son, the oldest and presumed rightful heir. Mireille wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But, considering that Hikaru Ishinomori had been a follower of Altena's, perhaps a matriarchal mentality had been adopted in the family.

Mireille bent forwards in her chair and picked up a slightly crinkled photo of Hikaru Ishinomori taken a few months before her death, the only one of the woman that had been contained in the intelligence folder. Dressed in an elegant dark blue business suit and with long flowing white hair that reached well past her shoulders, it was plain where Kaede and Ryosuke had gotten their looks. There was a newspaper clipping attached to the photo, and even with her nonexistent abilities in reading Japanese script, Mireille could tell it was about Hikaru Ishinomori's assassination. If the bullet hole ridden car in the black and white picture with the article was any indication, Kaede and Ryosuke's late mother had had a fatal encounter with a hail of lead. The Corsican wondered just how 'legitimate' Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals had been in the past if its majority owner and CEO back then had been shot to death by alleged 'business rivals'.

Mireille tossed the photo back with the others on the billiard table and turned her attention to her humming computer monitor. She had been having little luck discovering any further information on her and Kirika's new adversaries. Bar the online reports of Kaede's looming trial and Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals stock price trends or its research breakthroughs, there was absolutely nothing on the woman or her pair of 'Black Hands'. For the most part it seemed they were good at staying out of the limelight. But it wasn't surprising; generally people who lived in the darkness of the world were fairly adept at avoiding unwanted publicity. Usually such attention only came about when one was caught by the authorities, as in Kaede's case. Normally that would spell the end of one's career in the underworld even if they escaped prison or execution, although it was relative to their profession. For example, a contract killer would never be able to function efficiently again if her or his true identity, along with what they were accused of, was exposed to the entire globe, but a small time crook could suffer the same hardships yet continue to operate without too much difficultly.

Mireille closed her Web browser and relaxed back in her chair, her head inclined directly towards the ceiling, leaving her blonde tresses draped down the back of her chair. She shook out her mane of hair, before combing her fingers through the silky locks several times to make sure there were no tangles, and then placed her hands behind her head. She figured she had studied the contents of Breffort's intelligence dossier meticulously enough now. While virtually all of the newspaper articles remained unread because of the Japanese language barrier, Mireille felt she was familiar with the lion's share of the material that had been presented to her; she doubted the clippings would reveal any more insight into her and Kirika's enemies. It was time to start tracking down Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu.

Breffort's folder had included the whereabouts of Ryosuke and Vincent's last known accommodations in Paris, as well as the aliases they were using while within France's borders. However, after a quick inquiring phone call to the provided location, Mireille had learned that the two men were long gone from the luxury hotel they had previously been staying at… as she had suspected. Mireille hadn't believed Ryosuke and Vincent would have not relocated elsewhere after finding out a two man team of Soldats agents had been watching them… and after sending them to their graves, too.

While this would make hunting down the would-be Noir trickier, all was not lost. Ryosuke and Vincent's aliases would be the same-they would have to be to coincide with their forged passports… unless they were both equipped with more than one, but Mireille didn't what to think about that possibility. With their aliases more or less static, it would be a… relatively… simple matter of checking through every hotel and motel's guest database; as a rule the more lavish lodgings in the city had them, and the blonde believed her and Kirika's quarry would not lower their standards when moving accommodations-the hotel they had been staying at beforehand had certainly been upscale.

While Mireille's computer skills were adequate for the casual investigation of targets, sometimes one needed someone with a little more… flair, as in this particular circumstance. The Corsican assassin doubted she could break into and search through an untold number of hotel intranets without being caught or even successful for that matter, but luckily she knew someone just for this specific sort of task. And *only* for that reason.

Mireille was acquainted with a so-called hacker who lived and worked out of a basement below an old computer store in a somewhat rundown part of Paris. Lamentably, the hacker was amateurish in his business practices, and instead of accepting payment for his assistance electronically like Mireille would have preferred-thus permitting her to escape all contact with the hormonal teenage boy-he always desired cash upfront in a face-to-face exchange. But his services were cheap and reliable, and she occasionally took advantage of his abilities when it was required… that is, when she could tolerate the pimply-faced adolescent's crude come-ons and nauseating leers.

Mireille sighed up at the white painted ceiling above her. She and Kirika would have to visit Simon at some point today. There was no avoiding it. They needed to know where to find Ryosuke and Vincent as soon as possible. The earlier the two men were dead the earlier Mireille and Kirika could forget about this whole deviation from their happy lives and return to how it had been before.

As her thoughts turned to her introverted colleague Mireille's eyes softened, and her expression became rather sad. She hadn't heard so much as a peep from Kirika this morning after getting up early to continue her study of Breffort's material. The darkhaired girl had made only the briefest of appearances to water their pot plant by the window, though it hadn't even been her turn. That part of Mireille's usual morning ritual had slipped her mind. With the upheaval that had suddenly ripped its way into their lives all that had dominated the Corsican's thoughts of late was dealing with the threat to their peace.

Mireille turned her head lethargically towards the bedroom, gazing intently at the black adjoining wall as if her sight could somehow burrow its way through it to see the girl lying on the bed beyond. Mireille worried about Kirika. She wondered if she had made the right decision in rearming her with a gun. But it had been a necessary and ultimately inevitable evil. At least, it was what Mireille tried to believe. With her and Kirika travelling down the black path of murder once again, the girl would need a weapon to defend herself with. It was as simple as that. Neither Mireille nor Kirika had to like the fact; it was just the way it had to be. Nevertheless, that conviction didn't make Mireille feel any less disgusted with herself. She had willingly placed a gun in Kirika's hands, a tool which sole purpose was to kill, and as a result had banished any pretence that her partner was or could ever be an average girl who led a normal life, one free from violence and death.

Why did it have to be this way? Mireille was someone Kirika trusted, the *only* person Kirika trusted; the Corsican felt like she had betrayed that trust. She wondered if Kirika saw her in a different light now. Mireille wasn't sure if she could cope if the girl's feelings for her changed. She knew Kirika looked up to her to a degree, and had done so even before the events at the Manor. The sense of responsibility in maintaining that respected image of herself for Kirika's benefit was uncomfortable. In the past Mireille wouldn't have cared less about what her partner thought of her, but of course it was an entirely different story nowadays. The woman feared that one day she would inadvertently say or do something that would cause Kirika's impression of her to be shattered beyond repair.

Mireille hugged herself tightly, averting her eyes from the bedroom wall. But perhaps that day had already occurred when she had given Kirika a firearm, with all intention that the quiet girl used it. Mireille prayed that wasn't the case. She never wanted to let Kirika down. While she was the only person who mattered in Kirika's life, conversely the girl was the only person who mattered in her life also. If there came a time when Kirika no longer needed her, or worse, no longer felt the same way about her… Mireille didn't even want to contemplate what she would do. She had become dependent on Kirika for her happiness and more, no matter what she said or thought; a reality that scared her, if truth were told. But she supposed that was what it was to be in love. Still, it was quite a disconcerting feeling.

Mireille sat up straight and then pushed her chair away from the billiard table on its wheels, deciding to look in on the object of her affection, regardless of how unsettled that affection made her feel. She stood up from her chair and walked as quietly as she could towards the bedroom's stepped black wall, each footfall of her high heeled boots a soft, muted click on the hardwood floor. Mireille peeked over the top of the lowest section of the ebony partition and was rewarded with the sight of her partner lying flat on top of the covers of their bed, spreadeagled. Kirika gazed listlessly up at the ceiling, her mind seemingly far, far away from their apartment in Paris.

Instead of disturbing the taciturn girl's quiet introspection and revealing her presence, Mireille simply looked upon Kirika's frail form. Clad in khaki shorts and in the t-shirt emblazoned with France's national flag that Mireille had bought for her when the girl had first came to the country, Kirika looked positively adorable sprawled on the bed. But then, in Mireille's eyes, she practically always looked adorable. Truly, the woman was becoming a full-blown softy.

Mireille wondered what Kirika was reflecting on this time. Yesterday's undesirable events at Breffort's office and then the significant one that had subsequently occurred at home, no doubt. Suddenly Mireille's marginally lightening mood took a swan dive. She ruminated whether Kirika agreed with her decision to take Breffort's folder and consequently accept a dangerous assignment from Soldats, a group who were once their bitter foes... and really still were. In consenting to carry out the mission to deal with Kaede Ishinomori's Black Hands that were roaming about the city of Paris, Mireille had instantly doomed her and Kirika's peaceful lifestyle. She wondered if Kirika resented her for that, and not to mention handing her a gun as well.

No. Kirika would never feel that way towards Mireille despite any decision the blonde made, regardless of how bad or misguided it had been. It just wasn't in the girl's nature. At least, Mireille believed so. But then she could also hardly believe the naïve slip of a girl on the bed before her harboured a vicious and cold-blooded killer inside of her, the embodiment of an unforgiving and unfeeling murderer.

Yet Kirika had insisted they remain to listen to what Breffort had to say to begin with when Mireille herself was ready to leave the Soldats official's office. Maybe she was somewhat amiable to the idea of following a black path once again.

Mireille smiled derisively at the notion. Somehow she doubted that Kirika would jump at the chance to reside with violence and dice with death again.

Suddenly, Kirika's head shifted backwards on the pillow, and brown eyes encountered blue. Mireille put on a fond smile now that the girl was aware of her scrutiny, and then walked from behind the black bedroom wall, up the stairs, and then into the room itself. She approached the bed and stood by it as Kirika's immersed gaze travelled with her, the reticent girl impassively yet attentively watching her every move.

"We have to take a trip and visit someone today," Mireille informed Kirika in a mildly cheerful tone, as if they were going to see a favourite relative rather than an immature teenage computer enthusiast. "But before that I thought we should get in a little…." The blonde assassin turned her head pointedly in the direction of Kirika's parka, where the garment lay draped over the blue couch close by with its deadly contents hidden in one of its pockets. "…Practice…" she finished as the flicked her eyes back to the girl on the bed to determine if she understood or not.

Kirika looked to where Mireille had motioned with her head and upon seeing her parka, returned her eyes to the woman. She nodded from where she lay, giving a small sound of acceptance.

Mireille's smile grew a little, becoming a touch warmer at the positive response. Perhaps there wouldn't be any problems related to Kirika and the prospect of a fresh new wave of violence in her life. Nonetheless, Mireille wouldn't have minded knowing exactly what thoughts were running through her partner's pretty little head… and how they would affect the future.

* * *

Kirika traipsed a pace behind Mireille as she followed the woman deeper into the dim sewer tunnels that ran below the streets of Paris. In secret, crumbling places the sewer system joined with the old latticework of catacombs that were developed to house the dead during Roman times-or so Mireille had told her-and you could become easily lost in the murk, stumbling around aimlessly with the bones of the ancient departed. However, the path Kirika and Mireille currently walked was a familiar and well-worn one, and even though the darkhaired girl herself had not traversed it in quite some time, she still knew the way. And evidently so did her partner leading her.

The tunnels were almost completely silent, with the hustle and bustle of the city above barely audible; a low buzz on the edge of Kirika's hearing. An occasional drip of water plopping into the sewer canal punctured the otherwise noiseless environment, along with the rhythmic click of Mireille's high heels that echoed off the curved tunnel's dark grey walls. The only source of illumination was from the fiery red sconces mounted periodically on each side of the sewer passage, the feeble but many lights beating back the darkness to a mere gloom instead, allowing the two travellers footing to be sure and their course ahead relatively clear to their eyes.

Kirika's head was lowered, her soft reddish-brown eyes fastened to the stone paving in front of her. The backs of Mireille's black boots broke into the top of her vision, giving her a guide to follow while she wallowed in the thoughts swimming around in her mind… and on the deaden weight pulling down heavily on her parka from inside one of its pockets.

The sewer system a short distance away from their apartment-accessed by means of a manhole located in an isolated alleyway-was Kirika and Mireille's 'practice' spot. It was more like a place to refresh their shooting expertise in seclusion and security before an assignment was to be carried out. Since Mireille was taking Kirika to the site of their makeshift shooting range, it meant that the prospect of the slight girl having to wield her gun with deadly intent crept ever closer. It meant soon she would have to kill again.

Mireille's stride quickened somewhat as she and Kirika rounded a corner, their chalk drawn circular target now just visible off in the distance about twenty metres or so away. As Kirika and her partner came closer, the girl saw that the target had seen a little more use than she previously remembered. The large white circle with a smaller one scrawled within looked much the same as several months earlier, but with the exception of a noticeable increase in the depth of the divot inside the centre ring. Countless bullets had burrowed their way into the concrete segment of wall surrounded by the chalk loop during Kirika and Mireille's time as Noir, each of their fired slugs chipping off a fragment of stone until a deep gouge had been left behind. However, Kirika could see Mireille must have spent additional time down in their dank, private shooting range during her… absence from her blonde partner's side. She wondered why. Maybe it had been in preparation for the woman's advent to the Manor to save Kirika from herself. Although she doubted a single clip's worth of 9mm Parabellum rounds could have created such a marked growth in the scribbled target's aperture.

"Hmm, this has seen a lot of use," Mireille commented, also taking note of the large crater in the sewer wall. She walked over to the flashlight lying on the ground nearby-left from their previous visits-and switched it on, illuminating the wall ahead in a halo of white light and in turn making it clearer to see. "Perhaps we should find ourselves a new spot?" she proposed, looking back over her shoulder to Kirika who was standing demurely to her rear.

Kirika shook her head at the suggestion, uttering a diminutive mumble in the negative. While the rudimentary shooting range was in bad repair; it was *their* shooting range, their special little spot. It didn't matter the purpose of the chalk drawn target was for exercising her and Mireille's accuracy with their respective firearms, an exercise that would sooner or later be put into practice against real, flesh and blood targets. It was a spot that Kirika and Mireille came to alone to perform a joint activity undisturbed; a private, exclusive spot just for the two of them. Even if the nature of that activity possessed foreboding undertones, it didn't alter the fact that it and the place they had adopted to carry it out solely belonged to Kirika and Mireille. *Anything* that Kirika shared with her partner was something she treasured deeply.

Mireille smiled at Kirika warmly. "I don't think so either," she said softly, agreeing with the girl. But as she spoke the like-minded words Mireille's smile faltered a bit and her eyes shifted over and past her short partner's shoulders, back to the where they had just treaded only several moments earlier. She looked at the point where the sewer tunnel's path rounded the corner to the right with a rather wary gaze, as if half-expecting someone to appear from behind it. Kirika didn't believe anyone would, though. She was certain she would have detected the reverberations of an interloper's footsteps bouncing off the tunnel's walls long before they ever came within view; the faintest of noises were amplified tenfold in the old sewers. They could be utilised as effective early warning signals, which Kirika frequently made use of.

Tearing her eyes away from the corner, Mireille turned around fully to face Kirika, her smile returning to its former radiance. "I'll go first, okay?" she said, reaching casually into the handbag she had brought with her and pulling out her loaded Walther P99.

Kirika nodded in acquiesce and obediently took the white and pink striped handbag offered to her by Mireille to hold while the woman herself brushed up on her shooting skills. The docile girl retreated a couple of steps to give her partner some space to move, and then simply stood, mutely observing the blonde.

Mireille spread her legs a fraction and raised her gun in her right hand towards the chalk target on the sewer wall a dozen or so metres opposite. Bringing up her left hand underneath her right to steady her aim, she exhaled slowly and then squeezed the trigger of her firearm, sending a round at the small circle scrawled inside the larger on the wall.

A puff of grey dust near the centre of the target accompanied by the crack of a bullet ricocheting off stone proved that Mireille's commencing shot was on track, and it was swiftly followed by another puff and crack, and then another and another; sixteen in total, and all originating from within the middle chalk circle's boundary. It was evident to Kirika that her partner's accuracy with a gun had not diminished very much, if it had at all.

Having emptied her Walther's magazine completely into the tunnel wall, Mireille gave a pleased smile at her flawless performance and nodded to herself in satisfaction. "Your turn," she then said to Kirika as she turned to the girl, ejecting the expended clip from her gun as she did so.

Kirika returned Mireille's handbag to the woman and then wordlessly swapped places with her, being careful not to slip on any of the spent casings that littered the ground. However, as she stared at the two chalk circles ahead of her, Kirika hesitated. She would have to fire her gun-her instrument of murder. It may have been against an insignificant target drawn on a lifeless wall, but she feared that her simple willingness to pull the trigger of her weapon at anything-inanimate or otherwise-would be enough to entice the darkness inside of herself to rise further, and thus weaken her struggle against it. Purely taking the Beretta from Mireille had been the first step in her journey towards darkness; firing it here and now would be the second. A second step closer to her other self.

But it was unavoidable, wasn't it? Kirika had to use her gun-if not now, then most definitely later. It would be better in fact if she tempered the effect of firing it on an inert target rather than a live one. Maybe it would make it easier to use in the future like before, when she had first met Mireille… but that was exactly what she was afraid of. The easier it became to wield a weapon, the less her resistance to the darkness would consequently be.

With a virtually imperceptible sigh, Kirika reached inside her parka's right pocket and retrieved her Beretta. Already it felt lighter in her grasp than the last time she had held it. Warmer, too-it no longer numbed the flesh and chilled the bones of her hand.

Kirika was acutely aware of Mireille watching her; her partner's face expressionless, almost cold even. It conjured up the memories of the first few weeks she had spent with the blonde, when Mireille was considerably less than affectionate towards her. Kirika didn't like it when Mireille looked at her in that fashion, especially these days.

Knowing what Mireille was waiting for-what she wanted from her-Kirika slowly levelled her Beretta at the chalk target on the stone tunnel wall. But then she hesitated once more, her finger resting on the trigger of the firearm. Under the impassive gaze of Mireille, Kirika summoned her courage and squashed the icy tendrils of dread that were nesting in the depths of both her stomach and heart into a tiny ball, burying them away deep inside of herself. Then she flicked off the safety on her gun… and fired.

The first bullet struck dead centre inside the white circle, a perfect hit-a kill shot. Mireille inclined her head slightly, perhaps approving of Kirika's decision to shoot or her precision with her weapon. Most likely the former, if not both. Kirika's aptitude in the killing stemmed from her extensive training by Soldats best under Altena's supervision, which had created a fearsome assassin, one born and bred for murder. Even if Kirika managed to abstain from utilising her combat abilities for the rest of her life, they would never dull, not totally. They were a part of who she was, engrained in her every thought and every action.

Before Kirika knew it, the slide of her Beretta had clicked backwards, signifying that her gun was out of ammunition. A single wisp of smoke rose from the end of the barrel.

"As good as always," Mireille remarked, smiling faintly as she looked at the chalk target, her arms folded. She appeared pleased. "I suppose I should have expected you wouldn't have any need of practice," she added a little teasingly, turning her head back to Kirika.

Mireille's comment did not do much to alleviate the sense of defeat in Kirika's heart. Her partner's accolades concerning Kirika's aptitude as an assassin never invoked much pride in her to begin with.

Kirika popped the depleted clip from her Beretta and slipped it into the left rear pocket of her shorts, before fishing a fresh one from the right pocket. She reloaded her weapon, snapping the slide of the gun back into place with a flick of her wrist, chambering a round. The taciturn girl then exchanged hands with her Beretta M1934, now wielding it in her left. Kirika once again raised the gun and aimed it at the target drawn on the wall, ignoring the minor twinge of pain that suddenly wracked her left side from her movement. Her old bullet wound she had sustained below the Manor still gave her some trouble now and then. But Mireille had assured her it would be completely healed soon.

A single, slightly bemused blonde eyebrow climbed on Mireille's forehead at Kirika's actions, but she remained silent. It wasn't the first time the woman had seen her do such a thing. After Kirika had essentially lost the use of her right hand during the incident with Intoccabile, she had sworn to herself to never be dependant on one hand alone again. As a result, she had practiced shooting with her left hand at length, until she had become as adept and accurate with it as her right. Being able to wield a gun in either of her hands had already paid off in the past-once Kirika had simultaneously handled two firearms against a powerful Taiwanese triad, the added firepower of an extra weapon having been very beneficial in allowing Mireille to flee from the group's grasp. Although, she'd had some help from Chloe too.

Kirika paused for a moment, and then fired her Beretta at the wall, a second separating each pull of the trigger. She had decided that she may as well practice with her left hand while she was here at the shooting range-she had doubted refraining from doing so would have made much difference regarding her fight against the darkness inside of herself at this point. What were seven more bullets fired, after all? Besides, if Kirika were to be thrown into a life of sin again, it would be better to be totally prepared. Her own wouldn't be the only life being put on the line.

After emptying the magazine of her Beretta as perfectly as before when it was held in her opposite hand, Kirika lowered her weapon to her side. She took a breath, and then released it slowly. It was all right. The darkness hadn't overwhelmed her like she feared it could have-she hadn't even been aware of it at all, let alone of it stirring. And she didn't feel very different, either. Kirika was relieved. She was in control. She would remain as herself, as the girl who loved and cared for Mireille, and not change into the one who was apathetic to all life, including the woman she was supposed to cherish dearly.

"Are you ready?" Mireille asked, bringing Kirika out of her reverie. "We have somewhere else to be." She took a step forward and started kicking the expended bullet casings into the sewer water bordering the path, hiding some of the evidence of their unlawful activity in preparation for their departure.

Kirika nodded, putting her gun back into her parka's right pocket, before joining Mireille in her prudent task. All would be well.

* * *

Mireille looked up distastefully at the grimy sign posted above the equally dirty but unmarked door situated a short distance from the entrance of the deserted alleyway. The plaque was so caked with filth that only a very small handful of partially smudged letters could be made out, leaving the actual name of the business a mystery. Not that it mattered. The people who found themselves here already knew what goods and services the place offered; the storefront was just a cover, after all. But if by chance they didn't, then they would either move on none the wiser, or satisfy their curiosity by venturing inside. Of course, all that would greet those particular inquisitive few would be a normal-albeit rundown-shop. It was *below* the store where the real business was conducted.

With its entrance located within a narrow, seldom traversed cobblestone alley in a rather disreputable part of Paris, the setting of Simon 'Phayzed' Pierpont's base of operations catered agreeably to its normally secretive clientele, most of whom preferring to be discreet in their dealings. But Mireille seriously doubted if any of Simon's other customers were as high profile as herself and Kirika. She suspected most people who crossed the self-proclaimed hacking guru's threshold were unimportant nobodies simply searching for illegal digital products and/or computer hardware. Or, if seeking Simon's services, then for frivolous reasons, such as altering a college exam mark or defaming a website. Simon Pierpont was merely a minor criminal-a sociopathic delinquent more like-in relation to the big fish who operated in the underworld, but that was one of the primary reasons Mireille availed herself of his skills, rather than employing a more notable computer expert with relaxed morals. With Simon's name and vocation having little repute among those who led shady lives, it meant that Mireille by the same token was granted obscurity in her transactions with the boy. And a professional assassin could never have too much obscurity.

Mireille looked away from the sign to Kirika next to her. The girl hadn't spoken so much as a whisper after leaving the sewer tunnels, but for some reason the blonde felt that her partner's mood had improved some. While Kirika's disposition was normally quite melancholy, Mireille had detected a slight increase in the depressive air surrounding her of late. The Corsican had hoped it hadn't been her doing. But after Kirika's more than adequate performance in their shooting practice session, Mireille wasn't so concerned about how she was handling their slowly changing lifestyle as much anymore. The stoic girl seemed to be dealing suitably with it by herself. The fact made Mireille's heart rest easier in her chest. Kirika was a strong young woman-she had to have been to survive all she had been through with her sanity reasonably intact. Mireille was sure she would be fine.

Kirika wordlessly met the Corsican's blue eyes, silently signalling her readiness with her own brown orbs. Mireille pushed the grubby door to Simon's abode open, and then entered, Kirika close on her heels.

The interior of Simon's computer store façade was dreary and musty, the only source of illumination from several shafts of sunlight that streaked though the thin, grimy windows positioned up near to the ceiling on the russet walls, and dust motes could be made out swirling in the beams. Rickety shelves lined the peeling plaster walls and tables with rust clinging to their metal legs like mould were congregated in the centre of the shop. Most of the shelves and tables were bare, but a few carried items presumably for sale. Old, outdated computer parts that looked to be from the dawn of the technological era sat decaying on the furnishings, covered by a thick layer of dust. In the very slim likelihood that they were purchased and used, Mireille doubted they would even function.

At the far end of the shop was a desk with an old-fashioned register sitting on top, and behind it was apparently the cashier; a young man in his late teens with long, shoulder length oily black hair and slovenly clothed who was busy reading a comic book, paying absolutely no notice to his two potential customers.

All things considered it wasn't the most compelling of computer shops.

Mireille approached the counter while Kirika wandered aimlessly around the store, the girl peering closely at the filth encrusted motherboards and tiny monitors curiously, a cute expression of interest painted on her face. Rather than watch her partner's endearing antics, as she would have liked to do, Mireille instead tried to get the greasy cashier's attention.

"Excuse me," she ventured, "I-"

"All prices are labelled on the merchandise," the youth intoned apathetically in a drawn out sigh, not moving his eyes so much as even a fraction away from the pages of his comic.

"We are not here for your merchandise," Mireille replied, giving the uninterested cashier a flat stare. "Rather, we are here for your services. Particular services Simon offers."

The unkempt teen looked up over the edge of his comic at the assassin's words, and then his eyes widened slightly through his bangs at the sight of the sophisticated and attractive woman standing in front of his desk, clearly surprised that such a classy person had entered the store.

"Ah, uh…" he stammered dumbly, fumbling with his comic book for a moment and nearly dropping it, before deciding to wring it in his hands, "j-just go through the door behind me." He motioned weakly with his head to his rear, while keeping his gaze firmly glued to Mireille, unblinking. The boy acted like he had never seen a woman before.

"Thank you," Mireille said, and then looked over her shoulder to where Kirika was enthralled with tentatively prodding a stack of five and a half inch floppy disks. "Kirika," she beckoned, summoning the girl devotedly to her side.

Mireille opened the door the cashier had indicated, and then preceded down the flight of ratty wooden steps that descended ahead of her with Kirika in tow, heading into the building's basement where she knew Simon reclusively dwelled.

Once Mireille reached the bottom of the stairs along with Kirika, the sight that greeted her and her colleague was wholly different from the one that had on the floor above. It was as if she and Kirika had been propelled forward in time, technologically speaking. At least a dozen monitors of various sizes were arranged on a huge, black L-shaped desk fitted with two rows of shelves in the sizable square basement, along with a myriad of PC towers in a range of shades; some with psychedelic lighting fixtures decorating the outside of their casings that stood out brightly in the dimness of the room, while others had completely see-through panes like glass, allowing one to view the computer's inner workings. Countless cables ran from the desk like dangling spaghetti, before joining one another in a tangled mess carpeting the floor, almost hiding the grey concrete surface from sight. A number of the cables exited the mass of wiring and extended to one of many power point adapters connected to several surge-protected wall sockets on Mireille's left. It was quite the fire hazard in the woman's estimation, electrical surge protectors or no.

Sitting in front of the desk in a heavily cushioned black leather computer chair, typing furiously away on one of the half-dozen or so keyboards laid out before him, was the boy Mireille had come to meet. Simon Pierpont, better known by the inane alias 'Phayzed', was a skinny seventeen year old high school dropout with acne-ravaged features and a shock of faded dyed green hair mixed with his gnarled natural light brown locks. While the young man was not much to look at-certainly, Mireille did not find his shabby, frayed clothes and less-than-appealing looks easy on her eyes-he did possess an almost frightening level of knowledge and expertise regarding all things computer orientated, specifically networks… and their security. Unfortunately, Simon was still much the immature adolescent male, which made him… irksome to deal with.

"Software's on the left, music CDs on the right," Simon recited mechanically while he stared intensely at one of the monitor's screens, referring to the two tables a few feet behind him where rows and rows of pirate CDs were arranged in trays. "Ten Euros a pop. If some app' takes more than one CD, too bad-it's ten per CD, not per program, got it? Pay Ezza upstairs. And *no* swiping-" he absently tapped a finger on a monochrome screened monitor on his desk's highest shelf to his left which displayed the room's interior-there must have been a security camera positioned somewhere in the upper right hand corner of the basement, "-I can see all." Mireille questioned his declaration's validity; he hadn't even turned around to regard his two new arrivals yet, let alone shift his gaze away from the monitor he was seemingly enraptured with.

"While purchasing a copy of 'Strip Poker V: Bunny Girls Edition' does have its charms," Mireille said dryly, selecting the title of the first CD that came to her eye from the scores available on the pair of tables, "we're here on other matters."

"Dude, you have the worst tas-" Simon began, but then abruptly cut off and instead swivelled rapidly around in his chair to face Mireille and Kirika, clumsily knocking over a stack of CDs piled on his desk in the process. "Waa!" he wailed, making a feeble attempt to catch the flying discs while his green eyes remained affixed to his two visitors.

Mireille sighed. Simon hadn't changed much at all. She hoped that he had at least grown a little more mature… but that may be asking for a miracle.

"M-Mireille!" Simon exclaimed nervously, giving up on salvaging his strewn CDs. "It's been ages! Where have you been for so long?"

"I've… been busy," Mireille explained enigmatically, sparing a glance at Kirika for a split second. Simon didn't know of her profession. In fact, he didn't know much about her at all, beyond the fact that she was a wealthy and good-looking woman. But in Simon's opinion, that was probably all he really needed to know. All the better, however; the less he knew about Mireille, the safer the assassin would be. And Simon too by association.

"Yeah, I bet," Simon remarked suggestively, a leer coming to his pimply features as his eyes raked over the Corsican's gorgeous figure. "Busy doing *what* exactly…?" He had certainly gotten over his nervousness fast. A pity. Rather than becoming intimidated by Mireille's elegant presence, it normally seemed to goad him into becoming a childish lecher, at least after the first few seconds of their initial meeting.

Pointedly ignoring the insinuation that her secret vocation was that of a high-class prostitute-all but for a slight twitch of one eyebrow-Mireille decided to get down to business as quickly as possible and with any luck forgo further distasteful comments on the teen's part. "Nothing that concerns you. We're here for-"

"Hey, who's your little friend?" Simon asked, interrupting Mireille, whose temper took a sharp rise in a dangerous direction as a result. "She a tourist you're showing around or something?" The boy gestured to Kirika's t-shirt with the French flag imprinted on it.

Mireille made an irritated 'tsk' sound with her tongue. "No, she's-"

"Oh, then is she your cousin or something? A relative? Your sister?" Simon relentlessly inquired, talking over the blonde.

Mireille looked at Kirika the same time the quiet girl did likewise at her. Sister indeed! Staring at computer screens all day and all night must have damaged Simon's eyesight, or frazzled his brains… if he'd had any to begin with.

"Hey, I'm just curious," Simon said defensively while he made a placating motion with his hands, finally picking up on Mireille's cold and annoyed disposition. "Every time you've ever came down here you've been alone. But this time you actually brought someone with you. It's just a little weird, you know?" The self-proclaimed expert hacker turned his head to look at Kirika, sizing her petite form up. "I guess she must be pretty important then, right?"

Mireille didn't react in the slightest to the remark, schooling her face to an aloof countenance. She was certain if she revealed just how important Kirika was to her and consequently exactly how unattainable she herself was to Simon, it would not decrease his obnoxious comments and crude innuendoes but rather increase them.

Simon frowned a bit, but not because of the blonde's lack of response. "Doesn't talk much though, does she?" he said, still gawking at a mute Kirika, who stoically endured his scrutiny. "That's okay; I've never liked talkative girls that much anyway. They should be doing something more fun with their mouths instead of yapping." He leaned forward in his seat towards Kirika a little, grinning broadly. The pervert. Thank goodness the naïve girl was oblivious about such things… or so Mireille fervently hoped.

"Enough of this," Mireille snapped impatiently, and quite angrily. She fought back the urge to take a step closer to Kirika and drape a possessive arm around the girl's shoulders. "We have come to this decrepit hole for a specific purpose-which is not to waste time on meaningless chit-chat!" She should have left Kirika back at the apartment.

"Aw, come on," Simon whined, returning his attention to an irate Mireille. "I don't even know her name yet!"

"Let's keep it that way," Mireille said sharply, aware of the puzzled looks she was getting from a confused Kirika.

"What, you're not jealous, are you?" Simon unwisely kept up, a smirk coming to his face that made the assassin feel nauseous. "You know you're the only woman for me!" Perhaps Mireille should be flattered; for all his talk she sincerely doubted the lanky teen had ever been with a woman yet. No, on second thought not flattered-just revolted.

Kirika shifted her feet beside Mireille, eliciting a glance from the blonde woman. But upon looking, the girl appeared as sedate as ever to her gaze.

"Look!" Mireille said with cold fury as she returned her attention to Simon, her voice full of ice. "We have business to conduct. *Now*." She reached into her handbag and pulled out a folded piece of paper, holding it across the two CD display tables to Simon.

The teenager sighed in resignation. "Fine, fine," he relented, snatching the piece of paper out of Mireille's hand. "What sort of oh-so-boring-yet-incredibly-simple-for-my-mad-skills job do you want me to do?"

Mireille's temper cooled somewhat at Simon's compliance. At last they were making some progress. "We're searching for two men," she said, before quickly continuing as she noticed the perverted look that suddenly gleamed in the juvenile's eyes, "two men who arrived in Paris in the last week or so. We need you to find out the location of their accommodations as soon as possible-the building's address, their room number-everything. All the details you will need are on that note. There is a high likelihood that they will be staying at one of the more comfortable hotels in the city-you might want to start searching through the five-star ones first."

Simon unfolded the piece of paper and studied it with a contemplative expression. "Hmm… that's good. Not all hotels and motels and stuff have their intranets connected to the Internet; some don't even have their own network. But the classy ones usually do. It won't be easy though; their firewalls are normally total fortresses-bitches to bypass." He looked up at Mireille, his countenance becoming quite sly. "It's gonna cost extra…."

Mireille was prepared for this little eventuality. There was only one thing that interested Simon more than women and bragging, and that was money. "I'm willing to offer you a bonus of two hundred Euros on top of your standard one hundred Euro fee," the Corsican said. "For each day that passes, fifty will be subtracted from it. The faster you get us the information, the more money you will receive."

Simon bobbed his head repeatedly in acceptance as Mireille spoke, but then smiled in such a way that the blonde knew did not bode well for her mood.

"That's all good, but the 'extra' cost I was thinking of was more along the lines of a date. With you," Simon said, his grin turning downright cheeky. "You can bring your pal there too, if you want," he added impudently.

"I think not," Mireille scowled. Perhaps it would be to her benefit if the uncouth boy knew that she was a contract killer. Maybe then he wouldn't be so quick to rankle her nerves.

"Ah, it was worth a shot," Simon grinned unrepentantly. "'Kay, I'll get on this ASAP." He held out one hand, the palm facing upwards. "Payment upfront; you know the drill," the youth demanded.

Mireille took out a pair of fifty Euro notes from an ornate silver money clip she had retrieved from her handbag and placed them in Simon's eager little grasp. In a flash the computer buff shoved the cash into his jeans' right pocket, moving swiftly enough to rival many a martial artist. Greedy little boy.

"Mireille, you babe, a pleasure as always," Simon said in a sickeningly sweet voice.

Mireille simply turned around and started to walk up the basement's stairs, motioning with a quick and discreet hand gesture for Kirika to follow. "Email me when you have the information," she said in parting.

"Yep…." Simon replied in an absentminded manner that told the assassin he was more occupied with ogling her departing rear end. Yes, Mireille would definitely inform him of her occupation the next time they met. Or at the very least brandish her gun.

* * *

Mireille took a deep breath of fresh air as she and Kirika left the computer store, glad to have escaped its stifling confines and Simon's undressing eyes. If she never had to go down to the teen's basement again it would still be too soon.

"I don't like him."

Mireille turned to look at Kirika as the girl spoke for the first time since leaving the sewers. And then blinked at what she had actually said.

Kirika raised her head from the cobblestone street she seemed to be glowering-glowering!-at to look at the blonde woman beside her. "I don't like him," she repeated in the same soft tone.

Mireille simply stared at Kirika for a moment with a surprised and bemused expression wracking her features, before she smiled indulgently at the normally reticent girl. Was Kirika actually *jealous* at the attention Simon had unwelcomely bestowed upon Mireille? No, she couldn't be. It was ludicrous. But, she had to admit, it was very, very sweet.

Before she had even realised that her arm was moving, Mireille had placed a gentle hand on one of Kirika's slim shoulders. She shook her head slightly, dismissing her partner's rather startling statement and whatever motive was behind it, the gesture also, however, serving as a temporary distraction to that well-known uneasy sensation that was creeping into her offending limb. But despite it, Mireille still gave the darkhaired girl's shoulder a fond if restrained squeeze, her smile turning tender, although all the while the Corsican secretly discomforted by the familiarity with Kirika she was demonstrating.

"It's almost lunch time; why don't we go to that quaint bistro in St. Germain you like so much?" Mireille proposed warmly. "Afterwards, we can have ice-cream at that Italian place, hmm?"

Kirika's face lit up at the suggestion and she beamed a bright-yet small-smile at Mireille, before nodding eagerly and emitting her customary chirp of agreement.

Mireille's smile widened at the cute reaction. "Okay then," she said quietly.

Today might be the last day Mireille and Kirika could spend a genuinely peaceful afternoon together, and the blonde was determined to take advantage of the dwindling time to its fullest for her partner's sake. Once Simon tracked down Ryosuke and Vincent, 'Noir' would be instantly thrust down the black path whether they were ready or not. Or whether they liked it or not. Pleasant, enjoyable times such as having a quiet lunch together would become a thing of the past. Mireille had truly wanted these times to last, but it was not meant to be. So now all she could do was cling on to their lingering remnants, squeeze them for all they were worth, and then savour them, for they would be but memories when her and her partner's hands were stained with blood once again.

As Mireille walked out of the alleyway with Kirika, posing the idea of perhaps going out for dinner later tonight also, the woman found it strange she would be so attached to the quiet, normal life. She had always taken pleasure in her peaceful moments with Kirika, but she had never thought she would personally lament their impending disappearance so much. She had resigned herself to her lot in life after all, the one that dictated her eventual return to the black path of murder as a hired killer. But right now she did feel as though she would miss the good times. Yes, it was strange indeed.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

And there is the third chapter. A bit more character introduction in this one. Oh, the triads... it brings back memories... LOL. Just kidding. ^_^


	4. First Contact

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The fourth chapter. Or what I like to call 'Mireille's Guide to Being a Professional Assassin'. ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 4 - First Contact

Mireille picked up her strawberry flavoured club soda and took a long draft from it through the black plastic straw resting against the glass's rim, next to where the slices of lemon and lime were wedged solely for aesthetic reasons rather than for enhancing the taste of the drink. She was sitting at the bar in a small ritzy cocktail lounge found in Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental in Paris' 9th district, simply nursing her drink, as she had been doing for the last two hours. The greying bartender didn't seem to mind, though, appearing to be wholly occupied with polishing glasses and generally looking bored. That was, when he wasn't ogling Mireille appreciatively out of the corner of his eye or fixing her a fresh drink. He had attempted to engage her in conversation a couple of times, but Mireille was not one for idle small talk with strangers, even if the stranger happened to be a bartender with a sympathetic ear. Moreover, Mireille was playing the waiting game, an inevitable part of being a professional assassin, and it required all of her attention. Sometimes the woman found such a task wearying on her mind… but patience brought safety and efficiency.

It was late morning, and the lounge was understandably nearly empty of patrons, save for a trio of men in business suits sipping mineral waters while they chatted quietly amongst themselves, apparently going over the several documents that were spread out on the dark, buffed wooden surface of the circular table they were seated around. But that was one of the main reasons why Mireille had chosen this place to wait, or rather, spy from. That, and because the cocktail lounge opened out into the busy lobby of Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental, acting as a tranquil cove in a roiling sea of bustling people, and consequently providing a relatively clear view of the comings and goings of all the hotel's visitors; guests and otherwise. However, the blonde was only interested in two particular guests… two very dangerous guests.

Simon had emailed Mireille earlier in the morning with the information on Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu she had requested of him, one full day after she and Kirika had visited the uncouth hacker to make use of his talents. Mireille dreaded having to go back to the hormonal teen's basement hideaway to pay him the rest of his due fee, but for the moment that was the last thing on her mind. Through his meticulous-and illegal-scouring of every five star lodging's guest list across the city of Paris, Simon had discovered that Ryosuke and Vincent were staying at this very place, Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental, a quite lavish hotel that catered to prestigious clientele ranging from foreign diplomats to wealthy and distinguished overseas visitors; the majority of which having ties to prominent corporations. Kaede Ishinomori clearly preferred her older brother and his companion to reside in the lap of luxury whilst away from Japan.

Mireille had phoned the hotel from her apartment to check if Ryosuke and Vincent were within their suite before coming to the building with Kirika, but the member of staff she had spoken to informed her that the pair were not answering their telephone-they were seemingly out for the morning and he didn't know when they would return. That had been fine with Mireille, however. It gave her and Kirika the chance to visually confirm that the two men were in fact the ones they were looking for before committing themselves to some sort of decisive action, for instance laying in wait in their quarry's alleged room to ambush them, as the Corsican assassin had been tempted to do. Thus, here Mireille was, seated on a bar stool and sampling her fourth club soda of the morning, while patiently staking out the hotel's lobby.

Mireille replaced her half-finished drink on the bar beside her handbag, where it rested with its deadly payload contained inside, and looked up into the wide mirror mounted on the dusky wood wall panels on the other side of the bar, behind a series of shelves lined with bottles of expensive liquor and other potent yet pricey alcoholic beverages. The angle of the mirror bestowed the woman with a more or less unrestricted line of sight through the milling guests in the foyer-some of whom accompanied by bellhops wheeling brass luggage carts back and forth-to the hotel's front entrance, allowing her to monitor the throngs of people who entered the building, and to verify if Ryosuke and Vincent were among them. The position of the bar also meant that Mireille's back was facing the main entrance, offering her some welcome concealment from Ryosuke and Vincent's eyes when they happened by while still letting her perform her surveillance. The blonde wasn't sure whether or not the duo was aware of her and Kirika's true identity as once being the genuine Noir, or what they looked like even if the men were aware, but she wasn't taking any chances.

Mireille shifted her wary blue gaze to the reflection in the mirror of the small group of men dressed in bland suits of three different shades of grey respectively sitting at the table a few feet to her rear. They looked like typical corporate slaves, their lacklustre ties hanging like nooses around their necks. Nevertheless, the assassin tired to look beyond the men's mediocre exteriors, noting their mannerisms and exactly how attentive they really were to the papers laid out before them on their table. While Mireille didn't truly expect any Soldats minions to be involved with watching Ryosuke and Vincent anymore after she and Kirika had agreed to assist Breffort-if the man's words could be trusted by even the slightest degree-it would simply be foolish to ignore her surroundings just because she was looking out solely for two specific individuals. Still, despite Breffort's assurances that there would be no support from him to aid Mireille and Kirika in their mission to deal with Kaede's false Noir beyond intelligence, it did not rule out the possibility that agents loyal to the high-ranking Soldats member could be observing the Corsican and her Japanese counterpart without their knowledge. Certainly, Mireille wouldn't put it past Breffort to keep an eye on his little 'investment'. The prospect made her somewhat edgy. It would be best not to think about it-it might facilitate to relax her already stressed nerves-but unfortunately that wasn't an option for Mireille. She had to stay sharp; her and Kirika's confidential benefactor could be just as dangerous as Kaede's Black Hands…if not more so.

Mireille's eyes unconsciously drifted away from the cluster of men and up to the image of her diminutive partner near the top of mirror, as if they were inescapably attracted to it like a moth to flame. Kirika was sitting alone in a corner booth at the back of the cocktail lounge with a glass of barely touched orange juice on the table in front of her. Mireille had instructed the darkhaired girl to situate herself there, as it would permit her to survey the rest of the hotel's lobby that was out of the Corsican's field of vision; the section stretching from the middle of foyer all the way to the front desk and the concierge's desk a few feet to the left of it. Between the two of them they had maximum coverage of Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental's lobby, and in turn virtually all of the ground-level entryways into the hotel. They would not let Ryosuke and Vincent slip by them.

But Mireille had not separated from Kirika purely for that reason. It was also another defence against the likelihood that Ryosuke and Vincent knew of their identity. If they did, then they would no doubt be on guard for two young women travelling together-not alone. It was a trifling precaution in retrospect, but every little bit that would mask Mireille and Kirika's presence from their targets' view helped to bolster the pair's sense of security… well, in the Corsican's case at any rate.

Mireille released a soft breath as she saw Kirika's eyes once again negligently turn astray from the hotel lobby and focus on her instead. That had to be the twentieth time now, the blonde thought with some exasperation. The quiet girl had been alternating between scrutinising the lobby-like she was *supposed* to be doing-and staring at Mireille's back for most of the time they had been here. Her wavering focus was starting to chafe the woman's nerves, more so than they already were. Kirika was always meant to watch her back-it went without saying-but not literally… at least not in this instance, anyway.

Kirika hadn't been very amiable to the idea of splitting up when Mireille had introduced it to her. While the introverted girl had outwardly appeared her customary reserved self, inwardly Mireille had been able to tell that she was not content with the situation. But it had mattered not. It was unavoidable; safety came first. In actual fact Mireille wouldn't have minded Kirika to be sitting on a barstool by her side at this very moment. But that was a self-centred desire, one that stemmed from her heart, and it had no room in the mindset of an assassin.

Mireille crossed her legs and retrieved her half-full club soda from the bar in one hand, at the same moment she dropped her gaze from the reflection of her partner in the mirror, now only able to make out the petite form on the very edge of her vision. In truth, Mireille herself shouldn't be affording Kirika so much of her own attention either. But for some reason she couldn't seem to help it. She knew why, of course. She wasn't that self-deluding. But she favoured not to address the reasons why, not directly in any event. It was best not to. Not now, not when she was on an exceedingly important and indisputably soon to be perilous assignment with her counterpart. Mireille couldn't let those kinds of thoughts cloud her mind. She needed to concentrate on the mission.

Nevertheless, Mireille's thoughts quickly strayed to Kirika despite her-admittedly rather half-hearted-efforts to the contrary. Or more accurately, strayed to the memories of her and Kirika's final peaceful time together spent the day before yesterday, a last farewell to living in the light of the world before returning to the dark. The pair had had lunch together in Kirika's favourite café as promised after their meeting with Simon in his basement abode, and later during the evening they'd had a quiet candlelit dinner in a low lighted restaurant situated in the vicinity of the Seine River. Mireille had enjoyed both meals immensely, but there had been an unspoken subdued air cloistering the pleasurable atmosphere that would have otherwise enveloped them comfortingly in its pleasant embrace, allowing them to forget what path lay ahead for a time and instead simply relish the here and now.

But there could be no forgetting. Indeed, the precise knowledge of exactly what dark path lay ahead of them had caused Mireille and Kirika's last peaceful outing to be hampered by bleak thoughts and little conversation, especially on the lithe girl's part. It was as if growth in Mireille and Kirika's relationship was proceeding in reverse now, slowly but surely shrivelling, the expansive wall of silence intermingled with detachment that had existed once before between the two rebuilding itself gradually brick by brick. Kirika was starting to clam up again, hardly even voicing so much as a hint of what was on her mind anymore-whatever progress Mireille had made with drawing the girl out of her shell was deteriorating bit by bit in concord with the reconstructing wall. The woman had tried to rekindle the usual ambiance between herself and her partner, but all her labours had fallen flat, met with only an absent nod or restrained mumble. It was frustrating and at the same time disheartening. Mireille wasn't sure what to do… except carry out Breffort's assignment. She hoped that after Kaede's false Noir had departed from this world-their passage hastened by her and Kirika's hands-that everything would return to the way it had been before. Mireille didn't want to think what she would do if she and her diffident counterpart failed to fully recapture their slightly more than friendly appreciation of one another.

Mireille took a deep swig of her soda-not even bothering to use the straw-tilting her head back and swallowing a series of mouthfuls of the sweet beverage in quick succession, polishing off her drink. She put down her now empty glass on the bar with a disenchanted sigh, the pillar of ice cubes remaining inside emitting a faint clinking noise. She wished she had been quaffing something with more kick, no matter the time of day-a vodka and lemonade for instance, or at the very least a white wine. Basically anything that would help to loosen the tension in her muscles and alleviate the strain on her mind.

Mireille sighed once more. She didn't need the mirror to know that Kirika was still looking in her direction; she could practically feel the darkhaired girl's eyes roving her back. Mireille was starting to think that Kirika had become too adjusted to the quiet life, in spite of her prior performance in their sewer tunnel shooting range the day before last. Neither of them could afford to get sloppy, especially now. Kirika's discontent on the state of affairs would just have to be ignored for the time being. Still, a part of Mireille wondered if becoming accustomed to a lifestyle free of violence and death was such a bad thing.

* * *

Kirika was seated sedately on the curved, lush couch of a snug booth in the corner of Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental's cosy lobby cocktail lounge, her waiflike frame dwarfed by the large compartment enclosing her, further emphasised by they way she sank into its puffy burgundy-coloured cushions. A tall, slender glass of freshly squeezed orange juice sat in front of her on a small round table. It tasted good and was refreshing, but Kirika had hardly taken more than a few sips. She didn't have much of a thirst this morning. But she supposed that wasn't very surprising, all things considered. This was it. The hunt-it had begun. And soon after, so would the violence. And the killing.

While a part of Kirika was dreading her and Mireille's impending showdown with Ryosuke and Vincent, another part of her was eager to get it over with as quickly as possible, almost fervently so. She wanted her and her partner's return to a life of murder to be but the briefest of tastes, a mere brush of bloodshed. Truly, it should be a simple brush. Two bullets fired for two lives taken. Just two. It would not only be efficient, but it would be exceptionally swift. What was one or two shots fired from her gun, after all? What was the blood of one or two more people on her hands? One or two more sins added to the long list already scrawled in black under her name? What difference would those minor misdeeds compared to the weight of her countless other crimes make in her struggle for her very being against the dark, heartless presence that skulked inside of herself? In all honesty, did any of it really matter in the slightest after all the atrocities she had done during her years of life?

Kirika eyelids suddenly grew heavy, her gentle brown eyes turning even more sombre than normal. Yes, it did. It mattered to *her*. And for that precise reason it mattered to the darkness also. Kirika had read once that violence begets violence, and her darkness thrived on it in a similar fashion. Any form or degree of violent behaviour on Kirika's part would foster its emergence on the surface of her heart and mind, enticing it ever more to engulf the girl and take her body as its own vessel of destruction. It was something Kirika must prevent from happening at all costs. If her will was overpowered, all of her qualms about killing would vanish like snuffed candlelight, and the slayings that would be committed with her as a powerless puppet would most likely be considerable and horrific. And Mireille would be placed in danger too. No, Kirika *must* remain steadfast; her determination to stay in control must never falter. And certainly not now, not when she would once again be entering a life where ending them was a common occurrence.

Kirika's solemn but alert gaze wandered away from the far end of the hotel's lobby that she was meant to be watching for any signs of the false Noir, and focused on Mireille's back instead, only the slim woman's rear visible to her from where the blonde was seated at the bar. Kirika knew she should be assiduous to her assigned duty-she and Mireille were hunting formidable foes, after all-but her eyes just weren't able to stay fixed on one spot for more than a handful of minutes without returning to the sight of her older partner, hunched slightly over her drink with her striking but dour blue gaze lowered to the bar's surface.

Kirika watched Mireille impassively as the woman lifted her drink to her mouth and tilted back her head, draining what remained of the beverage in a small number of abrupt mouthfuls, before she resumed her former despondent posture on her barstool. Mireille didn't look to be in very good spirits. Her slouched bearing gave off a nearly visible aura of gloom to Kirika, and what the girl could make out of her expression in the mirror on the other side of the bar was positively grim. And cold.

Kirika's own shoulders slumped dejectedly, as if a sudden weight had been draped around them, matching her partner's own. She wondered how Mireille felt about the change in their lives, or more accurately the imminent change. Would she miss the peace that had existed in their daily lives? Would she miss living each day as an average person would, void of atrocious violence and vicious murder? Initially Kirika had believed so, but now she wasn't so sure. She had thought Mireille had liked living a simple life with her, a normal lifestyle, but in hindsight she had just been hoping as much. Certainly Mireille appeared to enjoy the peace, but Kirika had seen her when she checked her email for new contracts on her computer. The woman's visage had always looked… patient, and yet somewhat forlorn, too. Mireille didn't possess the same misgivings about being an assassin-a killer-as Kirika did. The blonde had just abstained from performing such nefarious deeds for her sake, while she recovered from her injuries received at the Manor and, unknowingly to Mireille, from the psychological trauma of losing herself to the darkness. The first weeks back in Paris had been difficult for Kirika, but knowing that Mireille felt the same way about her as she did for the woman had aided in lessening the impact of having regressed to the sinister persona that had ruled her for most of her young life.

But now that recuperation period was over-Kirika's mind and body had mended all but fully. Kirika no longer needed to be coddled. And with the emergence of another potential enemy-originating once again from Soldats no less-it was a harsh prompt to return to their previous way of life; the life of murderers. Already Mireille seemed to be lapsing back into her old manner.

Yesterday and for half the day before Kirika had spent all of her time with Mireille, doing activities they had normally indulged in after returning home to Paris; ones that ordinary people do and take for granted. But while they had all been pleasant and enjoyable-all time spent with Mireille was-Kirika had sensed that the woman was a little distracted, distant even, her customary mask of aloofness slipping over her features slightly and furthermore affecting her behaviour. Her partner's detached mood had impinged on Kirika's own, smothering it until the quiet girl could scarcely raise her head or utter more than two words. As a result, a damper had been put on the general atmosphere between her and Mireille; one Kirika had been acutely aware of and still was.

Kirika's saddened brown eyes fell away from Mireille to the tabletop where her orange juice sat, observing the trickles of condensation roll down the outside of the clear glass to pool around its base. She wondered if Mireille actually liked the life of a professional killer… and if the woman liked it more than a peaceful life with her.

Suddenly Kirika felt very lonely sitting in the corner booth all by herself. It no longer seemed cosy, but rather stifling. Picking up her still near full glass of juice, Kirika guzzled down the cool liquid in rapid gulps, consuming the drink completely… and giving her an excuse to leave her post to seek another from the bar, where a certain blonde woman was currently seated.

Kirika scooted out from the booth and, with her empty glass in hand, approached the cocktail lounge's bar. Mireille's head moved a margin at Kirika's movement, and her shoulders tensed a little, but otherwise the blonde did not react, not even to the girl's proximity when she stood adjacent to her, closer than a mere stranger would, as they were expected to be.

Kirika placed her glass on the bar and motioned to the lethargic bartender to get his attention, her bare arm almost brushing Mireille's equally uncovered one with the action, the minute, imperceptible hairs on their skin catching each other's and causing an electric sensation.

Mireille shifted her weight on her stool and edged a fraction away from Kirika before resettling herself, still not looking in the darkhaired girl's direction.

Kirika ordered another fruit juice; a pineapple one this time. As the bartender shuffled behind the bar, busying himself with fetching her drink-and in obviously no hurry-Kirika turned to Mireille, actually glad that the man's laziness would give her a chance to perhaps speak to her partner for a moment or two.

"Mirei-" she started, but to her surprise, was immediately cut off by the blonde assassin.

"You're rusty," Mireille said in a low murmur-her lips barely moving-while she used her straw grasped delicately in between her thumb and forefinger to idly swirl around the remains of the melting ice cubes in her glass in front of her. But Kirika heard the words perfectly-loud as if the woman were shouting them and clear as if she had articulated every syllable. And they cut like a knife.

Kirika closed her mouth and her head sank, suddenly having trouble keeping her chin up. She was thankful when her pineapple juice was ready in the subsequent minute; it meant she could go back to her seat and escape the upsetting situation she had naively walked into. After paying for the beverage with some of the money Mireille had given her for that specific purpose, Kirika returned with it and crestfallen steps to the sanctuary of the booth.

Maybe it was in Mireille's very nature to be an assassin, a part of who she was. Maybe it was in Kirika's too. But the girl certainly didn't feel that it was, despite the lethal skills she possessed. Perhaps the notion of a quiet, peaceful life for the rest of her and her partner's days had been but a fantasy. Nevertheless, whatever Mireille's outlook of the future, Kirika would respect it and the blonde assassin's wishes and stick by her no matter what. Mireille was the woman she loved; she could *not* and would *not* be parted from her, not again, even if it meant living a life bloated and corrupt with sin.

Still... Kirika hoped that Ryosuke and Vincent would show up soon.

* * *

Mireille stared hard into her glass as she stirred the now deformed ice cubes inside with her straw, the blocks slowly liquefying in the temperature of the lounge. She looked at the thawing remnants of the ice cubes and the shallow pool of water they dwelled in as if the sight held the answers to all of the mysteries of the universe. Or at the very least, the knowledge of how to properly handle Kirika.

Mireille scowled in irritation, her annoyance directed squarely at herself. She shouldn't have been so abrasive to Kirika, even if the girl did seem to be somewhat out of form. But in this unforgiving business, it was better if one put their personal feelings aside until an assignment was finished. A soft heart had no place on the black path. But even so, Mireille could have at least paid for Kirika's drink-just a small gesture to appease the girl and silently indicate that she was aware of and sympathised with her apprehension regarding their transition from the light to the dark.

Just as Mireille was debating whether or not she should throw caution into the wind and take a breather from surveying the front part of the hotel's lobby to join Kirika, even if for but a moment-she was looking quite downcast sitting all alone in the corner of the lounge, more so than normal-in the reflection of the wall mirror the woman spotted their targets finally returning to Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental.

While looking much like they had in their photos included in Breffort's intelligence report, Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu both entered the hotel's foyer in entirely dissimilar manners. Ryosuke strode into the building with long, sure strides as was befitting a man of his tall physique, dressed almost exactly how he had appeared in each and every surveillance snapshot Mireille had studied diligently the day before last. Oddly, in spite of his brisk movement, the broad twin tails of the man's jet-black coat did not flutter or even so much as quiver in the slightest. Instead the entire glossy garment hung rigidly on his slender frame, all but totally immobile. It made for a peculiar spectacle.

Conversely, Vincent practically waltzed into Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental with a swaggering gait and his hands stuffed in his pants' pockets, smiling brightly, and shamelessly turning his head to follow the path of every pretty woman who walked by, his smile widening and becoming all the more dazzling in relation to the passer-by's level of beauty. Whereas his companion nearly resembled all of his photographs down to a tee, Vincent did apparently have a fashion sense beyond the lone colour black. Garbed in a dark purple suit, a lavender satin shirt, and a pale yellow tie decorated with a black, spiralling pattern, Vincent's flashy exterior and flamboyant demeanour certainly drew one's eye, be it appreciative or appalled. The majority of the admiring gazes originated from the female onlookers, and Mireille had no doubt that the fair skinned man's gorgeous looks had more than a little something to do with that.

The flocks of people rushing around the foyer parted before Ryosuke and Vincent, either intimidated by the statuesque white-haired and black-clad hitman, or in an effort to shun his garishly clothed and showy partner. Or perhaps a combination of the two. However, Mireille was another case completely. She and her own partner had a job to do and an urgent objective to accomplish, the result of the latter shaping how their lives would be lived for the foreseeable future. Mireille earnestly prayed that everything would go smoothly… for Kirika's sake.

Mireille grabbed her handbag from the bar and then slid off her stool to the floor, before casually yet smartly making her way out of the cocktail lounge, her high-heeled boots clicking sharply with her hurried pace. Her blue gaze snapped to her right to ensure that Kirika was moving too-the girl had to have noticed Ryosuke and his comrade's arrival, even if she was somewhat distracted-and after confirming that fact to be true, she began to tail the false Noir, making sure that she kept a prudent distance between herself and her prey, along with a screen of flowing people for additional protection. Kirika would be traversing her own route after the two men separate from Mireille-the blonde had thought it wise to maintain the charade of being strangers to one another until the hostilities started; at that point there would be no question that they were affiliated.

Mireille lost Kirika in the crowd while she kept her attention on their targets, but she was not worried. They had a plan, after all. The Corsican paused nonchalantly by a vacant payphone at the same time Ryosuke and Vincent stopped at the hotel's front desk. The Chinese man chatted sociably to the female receptionist there for a couple of minutes-saying something that made her noticeably blush and smile prettily-before the pair set off once again, this time heading for the row of silver elevators inlaid in a brass-coloured solid marble wall festooned with chaotic whorls of white, black and grey engrained within the stone.

Mireille resumed shadowing Kaede's Black Hands at the same instant the men themselves started moving again, weaving gracefully amid lavishly dressed guests and crisply uniformed staff alike, carefully making certain to have significant cover in the form of people in the event Ryosuke or Vincent happened to look over their shoulders. She saw the duo step into one empty elevator, closing the shiny doors quickly to block out any others from riding it. They must like their privacy.

Mireille took a second to look up at the elevator's floor indicator mounted above its shut doors as the golden and ornate arrow ticked upwards. She couldn't be absolutely certain her targets were returning directly to their suite-she would just have to take a gamble. If she waited to see what level the pair's elevator actually stopped on they would end up leaving her behind and subsequently elude her, and Kirika to boot.

Mireille hurriedly entered a different elevator that's doors were just slipping closed, and pressed the button for the floor Ryosuke and Vincent's room was on. After waiting for what felt like hours but in reality was less than a minute, the elevator arrived at level five and the blonde disembarked swiftly, her eyes discreetly but feverishly darting this way and that to sight her prey once again. She caught a brief flicker of a black ponytail bobbing around a corner of an adjoining hallway to her left, and then quickly chased after it, trotting the few metres to the intersection to narrow the escalating gap between herself and the men.

Mireille trailed behind Ryosuke and Vincent as all three travelled down a red-carpeted corridor devoid of other people, dark and varnished wooden doors that led to guestrooms arranged periodically on either side. She recognised the course they were taking. It appeared that the false Noir were returning to their shared suite as predicted. Perfect. It was all going according to plan.

Mireille and Kirika had taken the opportunity to learn the basic layout of the fifth floor of Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental while they were waiting for Ryosuke and Vincent to arrive. Knowing the environment where the inevitable hit was to take place in advance was a judicious practice for a professional assassin, and one that Mireille adhered to when the chance or resources were available. It allowed for more detailed preparation, and hence a more neat operation, which the Corsican preferred-equally so for this assignment also.

Ryosuke and Vincent rounded another corner that led to the hallway where their room was to be found, leaving Mireille's line of sight. The woman tried not to increase her step to catch up. The moment was looming; she could not jeopardise the plan's success now.

Mireille followed after the two men, and saw that they had arrived at the white double doors to their expensive suite; still evidently oblivious to the threat she posed. The moment had come, or at least was about to. Kirika should be hiding at the other end of the hall, out of sight for now, but would soon be approaching the enemy as Mireille was continuing to do unabated. The plan was to sandwich Ryosuke and Vincent from opposite sides, and, at the precise second when the pair crossed the threshold to their hotel room, Mireille would execute the man closest to her at the same instant Kirika would do likewise, before dumping the bodies in the privacy of the suite and leaving them to be discovered by housekeeping. And of course by then, the culprits for the mysterious murders would have been long gone. Clean and efficient, just how Mireille liked it.

Suddenly, to Mireille's alarm, Ryosuke and Vincent paused in opening the doors to their room and appeared to discuss something, before proceeding to look back the way they had come… right in her direction.

Mireille, an experienced and highly skilled assassin, did not react in the least to their scrutiny, easily curbing the urge to freeze like a deer caught in headlights. Instead, she kept on walking at a steady pace as to not arouse their suspicion, even when Ryosuke and Vincent started retracing their steps, coming ever closer towards her. It looked like they did not recognise her, however, or without a doubt they would have been drawing weapons at that very moment… unless they wanted her to believe that and lure her in into an ambush. A trickle of perspiration ran down the middle of the woman's back at the dire concept.

As Mireille passed by the duo on Vincent's left, she couldn't prevent her eyes from shifting circumspectly to look at the attractive man; out of caution or trepidation, she wasn't certain which. To her surprise and disquiet, she was met with the twin amber halos of Vincent's soft yet stunning eyes accompanied by a small, enticing smile on his features; one he most likely used to charm many a woman while his gentle gaze put his 'victim' at ease. The combination held little sway over Mireille, though, no matter how especially gorgeous it made the man appear. She was more worried about the actual motivation behind the expression. Did Vincent-and therefore his partner, too-know her? Did he know the identities of the ones who rightfully held the title of Noir? Was it a smug smile that spelled impending doom for her? Or was it honestly just a pleasant one made to a beautiful woman who was walking by?

The muscles in Mireille's shoulders knotted anxiously. If she acted now, then she would definitely incur Vincent and Ryosuke's aggression, regardless of whether they really knew her or not. But if she didn't and the men did truly recognise her, then her hesitation would grant them an opening to strike first… a strike that Mireille doubted she would survive through.

After what felt like an eternity to Mireille, she at last progressed past Vincent and Ryosuke and then continued walking down the corridor, this time away from the men, but now with her vulnerable back to them…. A tempting target if they did know her face. But Kirika was still concealed around the corner ahead of her, a comforting-if unseen-presence. The blonde's dependable partner had evidently astutely decided to remain behind cover in the safety of the bordering hallway when she had seen the false Noir begin backtracking.

Mireille felt the tightness diminish in her shoulders. Good girl. Kirika would guard her back. And it also meant that they could salvage their plan with a few alterations, even if it would now be a little slapdash. Traces of blood would be left on the hallway's carpet after the modified plan was implemented, and the resulting pair of corpses would have to be dragged hastily into hiding before any witnesses happened by. Mireille disliked hauling dead bodies around, but there would be no other choice-she and Kirika would need time to make their escape without an alarm being sounded before they'd had a chance to evacuate the building.

As Mireille crossed into the adjoining corridor, she turned her head a fraction to the left and made eye contact with Kirika who was positioned with her back against the wall just by the T-junction, her silenced Beretta held in both her hands, its extended barrel directed up to the ceiling. There were no other people in sight, but the blonde had expected as much as soon as she had seen her partner armed-the girl would not have revealed her weapon otherwise.

Mireille met Kirika's gaze for but a split second, yet it was enough time to convene her intentions with a mixture of a hard look and slight swing of her head back down the hallway she had just navigated. The woman knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her counterpart would understand totally. Mireille and Kirika could tell what the other was thinking-within reasonable limits-mostly through each other's eyes. It was something that the two had been able to do from quite early in their association, and it had been a useful ability on several occasions, especially when on assignment, allowing them to predict each other's moves and subsequently work in harmony. Mireille had never given it much consideration; it had always transpired intuitively between her and Kirika, without so much as a hint of conscious effort. As if it were… natural for them.

Suddenly, with her long blonde locks fanning out widely behind her, Mireille broke the look with Kirika and spun around back the way she had come, pulling out her fully loaded Walther P99 from her handbag in one hand in the same fluid motion; a silencer attached to the gun. In perfect sync with the blonde assassin, Kirika made her move also, darting out from behind the wall with her Beretta M1934 raised in her hands, and placing herself in a ready stance beside her equally primed partner.

However, much to Mireille's horror, what greeted her and Kirika were not the defenceless backs of their oblivious targets, but rather a happily smiling Vincent brandishing dual Beretta Elites, one wielded in each hand, and both pointing straight at them. Ryosuke stood stationary a step behind his comrade, his back still to Mireille and Kirika, but now looking slightly over his left shoulder at the duo, a single violet eye able to be made out through his dangling white bangs a head above Vincent, watching the unfolding scene with languid interest.

Mireille registered this information in a tenth of a second before instinctively throwing herself behind the cover of the wall to her left, Kirika doing likewise opposite to her, just as Vincent began unloading steaming lead her and her partner's way with no regard to the glaring and undesirable attention the loud gunfire would attract.

Bullets pounded into the wall at the end of the corridor near to Mireille, tearing shards of wood and plaster free to rain down to the floor, before Vincent shifted his aim, directing fire at the woman's position. The Corsican assassin could hear the rounds hammering close to the edge of the wall she was hiding behind and could also detect a hint of the acrid smoke produced by their prior discharge from the firing chamber of one of the two Elites. The barrage effectively pinned her in place, unable to return fire without putting herself in Vincent's sure sights.

While the onslaught continued relentlessly, Mireille took the opportunity to spare a glance to her partner where the girl was taking cover on the other side of the T-junction across from her. Kirika was leaning with her back up against the wall and with her eyes tightly shut, while the top of her gun touched perpendicularly against her forehead, the darkhaired girl looking as if she were in deep meditation. Indeed, she appeared wholly undisturbed by the hail of bullets riddling the wall just around the corner from her, a multitude of holes now defacing its surface. It was as if Kirika was in another place entirely, but where, Mireille could not say.

Abruptly, Mireille heard the shooting gradually ease, and she transferred her focus from her partner's peculiar quirks to the peril at hand. Knowing that this was the moment she had been waiting for, she dropped to one knee into a crouch, letting go of her handbag in the same motion, then leaned out from around the bullet-ravaged corner, holding her Walther in a secure grip with two hands.

As the blonde did so, she saw that the cause of the ebbing gunfire was that Vincent had emptied one of his Elites, and was now dividing his remaining shots between Mireille and Kirika's locations, seeking to still keep them at bay albeit with his halved firepower. The gaudily dressed man steadily retreated all the while he maintained his vigilant, if somewhat manic, gaze on his would-be killers' positions, his smile no longer happy but seeming forced, now a rather nasty rictus marring his once attractive features. Ryosuke on the other hand walked down the hallway with apparent calm, not so much as even looking in his assailants' directions. He was either extremely brave or extremely arrogant. Perhaps both.

Mireille squeezed the trigger of her weapon in rapid succession, firing a trio of muted rounds at the pair of withdrawing men, hoping to put down at least one of them before they made it to the shelter of the intersection at the end of the hall… and before anybody came to investigate the racket of the gunfight.

But, to her dismay, her shots hit nothing but wood and plaster. Vincent had stooped low as soon as Mireille appeared from cover, and then scurried with alacrity behind Ryosuke, as if wishing to use the tall man as an impromptu shield. His fast and quite unexpected manoeuvre had been enough to throw off the Corsican's concentration and hence her aim, however, sparing him from kissing lead, much to the blonde's displeasure.

Desperately questing to remedy that fact at least in the case of one of the false Black Hands, Mireille shifted her attention to Ryosuke, just as he was about to disappear behind the protection of the far neighbouring corridor; his partner already having taken advantage of his screening body to do as much. She fired a short series of rounds at the white-haired man as he began rounding the corner after a scampering Vincent, all but one connecting with their target's exposed back. Mireille felt grim satisfaction start to rise up inside her at her success but it was rudely dashed aside as she saw, to her shock, Ryosuke react as if nothing had struck him at all, the man continuing to walk along placidly until he vanished down the other hallway. She had been certain she'd hit him, willing to swear on it even, but evidently she had been mistaken or Ryosuke would be lying in a growing pool of his own blood and not escaping instead. Mireille must really be getting careless to miss such a clear shot.

Mireille shook her head in frustration and lowered her gun a fraction, inwardly cursing at how things had played out. While she was debating on whether or not to pursue Ryosuke and Vincent, she looked over to where Kirika was. The girl had slid down the wall and was now sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her eyes remaining shut and her firearm still resting against her forehead. She appeared more like a frail young girl than ever, albeit one armed with a gun. Mireille couldn't remember hearing the sound of a Beretta M1934 joining her Walther P99 and Vincent's two M92F Elites during the firefight-Kirika hadn't fired a single round.

Mireille stared at Kirika expressionlessly for a few moments, and then suddenly grabbed her discarded handbag and angrily shoved her Walther back into its confines. The woman knew their opportunity was lost. Someone would have heard all of the fierce gunfire. People were probably rushing to this very spot right this second, security personnel-or worse, the police-with them. Mireille could already hear faint shouts echoing down the hallways. She and Kirika had better simply run. They had failed.

* * *

Kirika watched emotionlessly as Mireille stormed into the living room of their apartment and hurled her handbag on the billiard table, sending several pool balls careering away atop Breffort's documents to ricochet wildly off the rubber sides. The blonde started to pace heatedly back and forth beside the green table, her heels beating a tattoo on the floor and her countenance one of acute distaste, while Kirika settled herself back against a wall and continued to stoically observe her partner's tirade.

"We've blown our best chance to end this," Mireille spat furiously, glaring hard at the wooden floorboards. "If they didn't know what we looked like before, they certainly do now!" She halted her agitated march, still frowning at the floor. "They still might not be aware that we were once the true Noir, however," the woman went on in a quieter tone, more to herself than to Kirika. "Small comfort, but it's something."

Mireille resumed her pacing, muttering to herself in a low voice below Kirika's threshold of hearing, before stopping at the end of the billiard table, leaning on it with her hands gripping either side tightly, her knuckles white. Mireille stared down at its felt surface with unseeing blue eyes, as if looking through the documents and pool balls scattered haphazardly on it. She then paused in her private rant and turned her head to Kirika, her expression seeming lost somewhere between anxiousness and sadness. But the look lasted only a brief instant before it vanished as she turned back to the billiard table to scowl at Breffort's papers, fuming silently.

With Mireille's outburst apparently out of steam for the time being, Kirika pushed off the wall, deciding to leave the blonde alone for a bit and brew some tea to help soothe her temper. "I'll make some tea," she declared softly, before walking past Mireille, heading for the kitchen.

Mireille merely nodded absently and mumbled an acknowledgement, not moving from her position.

As Kirika went about filling the kettle with water in the kitchen, she thought back to today's earlier events. She couldn't help but be relieved at what had happened. She was glad Mireille had not been harmed, but she was also glad she hadn't needed to fire her gun at someone. Kirika had hesitated when the shooting started, loath to touch the darkness inside of herself. But in truth, she had touched it when she had burst out of cover with Mireille to confront Ryosuke and Vincent… but only fleetingly. She had recoiled after that first contact, her will to fight abandoning her outright as a result. Kirika didn't know whether Mireille had noticed her reluctance, but she hoped the blonde had not-she didn't want her partner to think she had let her down by not supporting her. She never wanted to disappoint Mireille.

Nevertheless, Kirika was conscious that this was only a temporary reprieve. She would have to fight eventually; sooner now, with Ryosuke and Vincent aware of her and Mireille. Dealing with the two men would be even more difficult and in turn more dangerous in the future. Ultimately, Kirika's resistance would not be able to last forever… it would be kill or be killed.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Only some very mild action and angsty stuff in this chapter. I debated whether Mireille would be motivated enough to do a bit of pacing and fuming, and in front of Kirika, but after considering it for a while I figured her frustration of failing to kill R+V (and how much was riding on that she succeed) would cause her to lose herself for a moment or two.


	5. Dissolving Lives

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The fifth chapter. A fair amount of fluffiness in this part.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 5 - Dissolving Lives

Ryosuke Ishinomori was seated on a cream, elaborately embroidered loveseat, stoically watching his partner with dead violet eyes struggle back and forth from the bedroom to the sitting room, hauling their luggage as he went, in preparation for their hasty departure from Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental. It had been less than an hour since two more Soldats operatives had attempted to assassinate him and Vin, but Ryosuke would have preferred it if they had already departed the hotel. Their location had been clearly compromised by the foul society, and due to his overeager companion's typical zeal, a huge ruckus had erupted in the building. A mass exodus of panicked guests was underway as this very moment, one that Ryosuke and Vin were readily taking advantage of to check out of their accommodations themselves without seeming overly suspicious. The Parisian Metropolitan Police force had not yet arrived to cordon off the crime scene immediately outside their doors, which was definitely in Ryosuke and Vin's favour also-the local authorities would surely wish to question them because of their room's close proximity to the area where the prior shootout took place. The two assassins already had Soldats on their backs; they didn't need the Police clambering atop them too.

Ryosuke bent forwards in his seat and rested his forearms on his knees. He was still garbed in his customary black coat, as he normally was most of the time, especially when away from the relative security of his quarters at home. The tails of the ebony garment folded strangely around him on the sofa, rigidly, while the remainder hung heavily about his shoulders. But it was a reassuring weight to the hardened hitman; indeed, it was a protective one.

Ryosuke rolled his left shoulder, where he knew a cluster of putrid purple, almost black bruises had erupted and already fully ripened in the short period since they had been sustained, attempting to relieve some of the stiffness in the joint. The bruises ached in a constant hum, but not uncomfortably so-his resilient body, with its cordlike muscles honed to the consistency of steel, was used to such torture. He had suffered these particular agonies countless times over the years-all they served to do now was further strengthen his unbreakable body.

Vin let out an exaggerated worn-out sigh as he dropped the final packed bag by the guestroom's double doors with the other two, before straightening and knuckling his back, as if the task of moving their belongings had been the most gruelling labour he had ever had the misfortune to perform. He shouldn't complain though; he had wanted to bring all of those extravagant clothes with him on their trip to Paris, each one a total eyesore to Ryosuke. It hurt to look at his partner sometimes-the colourful fabrics Vin chose to frequently cloth himself in tended to cause an acute burning sensation behind the white-haired man's eyes. Even now, Ryosuke could feel a headache starting to seize him, a dull throbbing drumming a rhythm inside his skull. No, in truth it was another chronic migraine, the type that made sleep impossible and threatened to shatter his brain, disrupting his every waking thought until all he could focus on was the pain.

Ryosuke reached inside his right coat pocket and fished out an orange plastic bottle of pills. Popping open the container, the man tapped out three of the chalky white tablets into one palm and then tossed him into his mouth. He crunched on his medication in slow, steady chews, not bothered by the stark taste of the powder now blending with his saliva. The drugs did little to help the constant pounding in his mind, but at least it was something to possibly alleviate the pressure a minuscule amount, even if they were relatively useless.

"I can't believe we have to leave here already. We only stayed for two nights!" Vin lamented in perfect Japanese, turning around to whine to Ryosuke as the white-haired man replaced his pills in his glossy coat's pocket. "I didn't even get to sample room service-I heard this place has great masseuses! Not as good as the ones back home in Hong Kong's… err… looser parts, obviously, but still good."

"No choice," Ryosuke said in his lifeless voice, its pitch eerily unvarying, while his violet eyes stared at nothing. "Soldats… they have found us once again."

Vin smirked that mischievous half-smile of his, the one that graced the garishly dressed man's features every time his mind was on the finer specimens of the opposite sex. "I don't know," he intoned dreamily, gazing vacantly up at the ceiling. He pulled his long black ponytail over his right shoulder and began fiddling with the bushy tuft at the end, flicking it absently with a finger-another pining gesture Ryosuke was familiar with. "If Soldats insists on sending beautiful agents like that woman after us from now on, I won't mind that much at all. It sure beats those fashionably challenged men-in-black that are always trying to kill us." Vin sighed blissfully, his smile now becoming a full one, one that had caused countless women to swoon in delight in the past. "I can smell Soldats lackeys a mile away, but with her it's different…. Ahh… I can still smell her perfume…." he whispered softly to himself, inhaling deeply, as if the scent really lingered for him to take a whiff.

"That's your own," Ryosuke deadpanned, although it was a more automatic response to his companion's usual antics than a genuine rib.

His partner's mocking remark snapping him out of his daydream, Vin ceased toying with his ponytail and turned his head to regard the black-clad man in exasperation. "That's not funny," he grumbled, a sulky expression forming on his face.

Ryosuke raised a hand to his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as his migraine took a sharp rise in the level of torment it was inflicting, now a sledgehammer smashing apart his thoughts. He shut his eyes, hoping to shut out the thumping with it. A pathetic and foolish notion, things desperate people engaged in. Ryosuke lowered his head and grimaced faintly, Vin's chattering voice harping on about the classy women's affections he would be abandoning by deserting the hotel and the hurried sounds of fleeing guests outside their room's closed doors all being reduced to a muffled drone.

"Hey, are you alright?" Vin's concerned voice broke into Ryosuke's mind, seeming to come from far away. The white-haired man felt a gentle touch on his shoulder.

Ryosuke roughly shrugged off his partner's hand and nodded brusquely, but kept his own hand in place obscuring the discomfort wracking his features. He heard Vin heave a sigh on the extreme edge of his hearing.

"Migraines again…" the shorter man said quietly, a statement rather than an inquiry. He was aware of his comrade's malady… and knew better than to comment too much on it.

The pain in Ryosuke's head eventually receded a tad after a few minutes, permitting more sounds to filter into his mind. He heard Vin walk a few steps away from him, and then stop. Ryosuke cracked open his dark-ringed eyes, risking the chance that the light could pierce through them and into his brain, heightening the severity of his migraine. Mercifully, it turned out that his eyes hadn't reached the point where they had become sensitive to bright light, and instead all that greeted him when he opened them was the sight of Vin's purple clothed back.

"We should have been back in Yokohama by now," Vin remarked wearily, shaking his head slightly. "I'm beginning to think we were sent on a wild goose chase. We must have checked a dozen private collections so far." He turned around to face Ryosuke, bewilderment warring with frustration on his countenance. "Hell, we even checked out a couple of museums and obscure stores. Does this thing even exist?" The triad member snorted, and then shook his head once more. "All this trouble for something that was probably thrown in the trash or burnt to a crisp. Or maybe even crumbled apart by its own accord by now. And it doesn't help that D'Aubigne's details were so damn vague we hardly know where or even what precisely we're looking for. We'll probably have to scour the whole freakin' city of Paris before we see the end of this!" Vin made a despondent moan and ran the fingers of one hand through his loosely tied back hair.

Ryosuke merely grunted in response. He wouldn't have been surprised if Dominique *had* dispatched them on an unfeasible task. It would be just like that conniving succubus. Perhaps she had wanted him out of Japan and his mistrustful presence away from his dear sister's side for a while. Ryosuke was certain the order to go to Paris in search of the artefact from Kaede had stemmed solely from Dominique's persuasion. That bitch seemed to be sinking her fangs into everything in the Ishinomori Empire these days… his younger sister especially. Just like mother before. Ryosuke's absence would surely allow Dominique to further corrupt Kaede and expand her authority even more among his family's followers. He had to return to Yokohama as soon as possible; already he had been away far too long for his liking. But not empty handed if he could help it; it would be just the excuse Dominique would need to compel Kaede to reprimand him-and Vin as well, for that matter-for his failure. Ryosuke couldn't let his waning influence with his sister ebb anymore than it had thus far; he was the only genuine voice of reason who still had the woman's ear-he could not afford to lose it or Dominique would most definitely hold complete sway over Kaede's will.

"Soldats dogging us at virtually every turn isn't improving circumstances, either," Vin went on, recapturing Ryosuke's attention. That impish smile then made a comeback on the flashy man's visage, his aggravation fading. "Although I don't suppose I would object to being stalked by that lovely blonde we encountered today," he amended furtively. "I wonder what her name is…. It's too bad we'll in all probability have to kill her. Maybe I could get the opportunity to have some fun with her before that, however. Hmm…." Vin held his chin between his thumb and forefinger, evidently deliberating the likelihood. One day his keen appreciation for the opposite sex would be the death of him.

Ryosuke ignored the bulk of Vin's comments, but he agreed with his partner when it came to the part of Soldats persistently hounding them. He thought he and Vin had been circumspect when entering the country, but apparently they had not been circumspect enough. Soldats. Their eyes were everywhere, relentlessly watching, like some monstrous beast from an ancient myth. Ryosuke and Vin had only disposed of the last two Soldats spies a few days ago, and already a pair of replacements was on their tails. If things were to continue in this way, it would grow tiresome very swiftly. And not to mention troublesome. They needed the Soldats division based in France-or more specifically, the two newly assigned Soldats agents-off their backs for a time so they could carry out their mission-regardless of how vain it was emerging to be-more effectively, and hence give them a better chance of actually achieving success. But Ryosuke and Vin were only two men; they could not split up so one could draw Soldats' attention while the other hunted for the item they were seeking. It would lower their searching efficiency considerably with the added detriment of increasing the length they would be forced to remain in Paris for… and also the period of time for which Ryosuke would be separated from Kaede. They needed outside assistance… but where could they find it?

* * *

Mireille's blue eyes inched opened slowly as she gradually swam up from the depths of unconsciousness and into full wakefulness. She was lying on her back in bed, with a warm, familiar presence pressed closely against her left side. The heat from the firm yet pliant mass engulfed the woman in its comfortable embrace, threatening to ease her back into Morpheus' arms. She was tempted to submit, indeed her eyelids began to feel as if heavy weights were dragging them down, but there was no rest for the wicked. Well, not much rest at any rate. Mireille could remain in bed just a little bit longer-in truth there was no real rush to get up, in spite of all the important errands she had to perform today. Yes… they could wait.

Mireille felt a soft pressure across her bare stomach, where her oversized shirt had ridden up, rising and falling gently with her every breath. Its texture was that of the smoothest silk, and rubbed delightfully on her exposed midriff in concert with her breathing, sending trills of pleasure through her body. Another weight rested on her equally uncovered left thigh, just as sleek and almost as slender as the first. While she relished the one only a short distance below her breasts, this specific weight had always been her favourite. Mireille internally fought with herself for a couple of seconds, knowing it was a losing battle and merely a token gesture at best, and then shifted her leg a little, causing the object atop it to slide deliciously down her inner thigh and nestle only a fraction of an inch away from the intimate juncture between her slightly parted legs.

Mireille let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction, hardly audible to prevent the person next to her from being disturbed… and possibly ruining her guilty pleasure. Once again without fail, Mireille had awoken to have Kirika's dainty form wrapped around her maturer own. Even in the event they fell asleep spaced apart from one another the end result was always the same.

The woman smiled faintly up at the ceiling. Some things never changed, at least. Not that she was complaining, far from it. The morning when Mireille didn't wake up with Kirika squeezed up snugly beside her was the morning when their relationship had definitely taken a sour turn. But, evidently for the present anyhow, their relationship had not yet decayed to that distressing stage, despite the grim events that had occurred in the past few days, seemingly shoving a vicious wedge between the Corsican and her Japanese counterpart. Nevertheless, that wedge would undoubtedly push Mireille and Kirika apart further with every passing day they lived in darkness… perhaps the morning would soon come when the blonde would wake up alone.

But not this morning, to Mireille's great collective joy and relief. From nearly the first week she had agreed to work with Kirika, the girl had always preferred to sleep in the same bed as her-the necessity of doing so due to only having one bed in the apartment notwithstanding-to such a point that Mireille had on more than one occasion been obliged while on assignment away from Paris to grudgingly push the single beds in their hotel rooms together, just so that her partner could nap contentedly. And also so that Mireille would not have to suffer even more depressed looks than was common from the brooding girl.

Initially Kirika had kept her distance from the woman in bed, but little by little she had slinked closer to the blonde's side, until Mireille stirred every single morning with her partner more or less clinging to her tightly… and thinking almost nothing of it, so accustomed to it had she become. It had grown to become an enjoyment for Mireille, one she would be hard pressed to give up… although she would never truly admit it. Mireille did have to confess however that simply sleeping beside somebody else helped to provide her with a more peaceful slumber, doubly so if that somebody was her cute counterpart. It had been a slow, gradual progression for the normally independent woman naturally, but over time, and especially now, the Corsican roused herself each morning feeling very refreshed and well rested.

Mireille lay there in bed for several minutes, staring listlessly up at the ceiling, unmoving, simply revelling in the divine feeling of having Kirika cuddled close to her. She was acutely conscious of where her partner's left arm and leg were positioned, and, as she frequently had to do each morning, was forced to quash the illicit urge to slip lower in the bed and cause the lithe limbs to press against two places on her body they really shouldn't, no matter how exquisite the sensations of the forbidden contacts would have been. As if somehow reading her partner's mind even while she was sleeping, Kirika fidgeted beside Mireille, sliding her left leg along the woman's bare thigh until her knee was nearly pushing against the centre of the Corsican's crotch, while at the same time her arm wandered slightly higher on the blonde's stomach. For a brief moment of jumbled panic and hopefulness, Mireille thought that the darkhaired girl was actually going to inadvertently brush her breasts, unconsciously cup one of the mounds even, but to her relief-or was that disappointment?-Kirika stopped a few centimetres short on her torso, her hand now resting under her shirt. She then became still once again, her rhythmic, whisper-quiet breathing resuming its former pace.

Mireille released the breath she had been holding as Kirika settled down. She swallowed hard. Perhaps it would be better if she got up after all. She really did have quite a considerable amount of tasks to do today. Getting an early start would be the smart thing to do.

After a number of minutes in which she did not move a single muscle to leave the bed or Kirika's embrace, Mireille sighed and accepted the fact that she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. She should have acknowledged that fact to begin with; not until she had indulged in her habitual-moderately chaste-whims would she be able to muster the willpower to escape her delectable counterpart's hold.

Mireille turned her head to her left on her pillow to gaze upon her quietly slumbering companion's pretty visage, breathing in the darkhaired girl's delicate, adorable features. Kirika's expression appeared so relaxed in her sleep. At peace. It was a beautiful sight to Mireille's eyes-it always was. The woman loved to take rare moments such as this to just look upon Kirika. In her sleep Mireille's formidable partner was no longer an astounding assassin gifted with unmatched abilities, but rather simply an ordinary girl, resting placidly. It was this facet of Kirika that attracted Mireille to her the most, this… open vulnerability. She wasn't certain why exactly. She had speculated before that it was perhaps because Kirika's capabilities in the art of murder were a whole level above her own, and at times like these it was as if the introverted girl required Mireille's protection despite that, making the woman feel a sense of worth, like she was needed. It was a good feeling, and caused a peculiar stirring in her heart… an agreeable one.

Mireille, knowing from many previous mornings that resistance was hopeless and it was better to simply surrender to her weakness, extended her left arm across the pillow above her snoozing partner's head, and, with a very gentle touch, began to play with Kirika's dark locks, tenderly curling the short tresses around her slender fingers, luxuriating in their satiny feel. She just couldn't help herself, be it toying with the girl's hair or caressing her soft cheeks and lips, marvelling in her delicate beauty. With Kirika sleeping soundly, effectively dead to the world owing to her small body recuperating from its serious gunshot wound, it permitted Mireille to safely treat herself to her secret desires… something that she had been doing nearly ever since it had dawned on her that her partner now slumbered deeply, and therefore would be ignorant to any intimate attentions. Mireille always felt exceedingly guilty and shamed at her behaviour and lack of self-control afterwards; it was as if she had somehow taken advantage of poor, oblivious Kirika. The woman would then vow that she would have more strength of will next time, but inevitably when dawn broke the following day her prior silent, ardent oath was forgotten, and she was once again furtively petting a snoozing Kirika… and adoring every second of it.

Mireille's wayward hand dropped away from Kirika's head-the stoic girl's mop of hair now quite dishevelled-and back onto the pillow, accompanied by a jaded sigh. But for some reason this morning, the blonde couldn't seem to marshal the normally sizeable enthusiasm for her delightful vice she usually had. All she could think about while caressing Kirika's dark locks was what the reticent girl would be forced to face in the future-the black path; a dire course in life that Mireille had started to lead her down once more.

Guilt began to sweep up inside the Corsican, a different kind of guilt to the one related to her surreptitious touches of Kirika, but she crushed it ruthlessly in an iron fist. It was pointless to dwell on something that could not be changed or taken back. There could be no going back for Mireille and Kirika, not until their enemies were dead. They must go forward until the end-it was the simple truth. The guilt could come later, when it was all over, and then Mireille would have all the time in the world to criticise her earlier decisions and blame herself for what she had put Kirika through.

Mireille continued to gaze at Kirika, this time with sad eyes rather than enraptured ones. She wondered how long this innocent vision of her partner would last. The further they travelled down the black path's dark cobblestones, stained with the blood of all those who had lost their lives on the harsh, unforgiving journey, the further Kirika would be corrupted… maybe. Kirika had lasted this long without losing her childlike purity. Of course, there was another Kirika buried inside of the one Mireille cared for, one who was did not possess a shred of morality whatsoever. It was that Kirika who had been fed all of the maliciousness the girl had been exposed to her entire live. Perhaps it would be that cold-hearted Kirika who would ultimately replace Mireille's as they traversed the black path. The woman prayed that would not be the case. But she couldn't ignore the possibility either. All she could do however was watch for any signs, and hope to somehow prevent that dreaded transition before it was too late if it did threaten to come to pass.

Her mood now spoilt, Mireille decided she might as well get up. Carefully, as not to awaken Kirika, she slipped nimbly from the darkhaired girl's hug, her partner's left arm and leg sliding over her body before gently slumping to the surface of the bed. Mireille sat up on the edge of the bed and rolled her head around on her shoulders, stretching the muscles in her neck to loosen the kinks, and then ran her hands through her long blonde mane of hair several times, attempting to rid it of tangles. As she stood up, she heard an alteration in Kirika's rate of breathing, a hitch sullying its rhythm, indicating to the woman that her colleague had roused in spite of her labours to the contrary.

Mireille quickly pulled down her still ruffled shirt over her hips and smoothed it out a little anxiously, hiding her completely naked posterior from Kirika's view… although she was almost certain the girl had gotten an eyeful. She tried to distance her mind from the… awkward… prospect, while suppressing the impulse to look over her shoulder and check if her partner really had caught a glimpse of her exposed rump. Whatever had possessed Mireille to forgo donning underwear after choosing to wear a solitary-and rather short-oversized shirt to sleep in she didn't quite know, but for some reason she couldn't-or perhaps more accurately didn't want to-identify, she was nearly positive she still wouldn't be slipping on any panties the next time she doffed the simple garment, regardless of the risk that Kirika might see the cheeks of her uncovered rear end… again, or maybe even get a peek between her legs at her….

"I'm going to take a shower," Mireille informed Kirika with her back still to the girl, consciously keeping her voice level-and pleased that she had succeeded in doing so. Her throat had become rather parched all of a sudden.

After being answered by a mumble of acknowledgement, Mireille, resisting the compulsion to flatten out her shirt again, proceeded for the bathroom, doing her utmost to keep her pace brisk but not overly so, not wishing to give the impression she was fleeing the room-not that she was, of course. She tried not to think about whether Kirika's eyes were still on her back … or on any other parts of her body. Nevertheless, she was relieved when she reached the privacy of the bathroom.

* * *

Kirika was brought back into the waking world as something undulated beneath her left arm and leg, before becoming still once again. Her breathing remained slow and even, a technique she had learned and mastered during her time training under Altena and her Soldats enclave's strict hands. She did not even require conscious thought to regulate it, so engrained was the ability. Feigning sleep could be a useful talent for an assassin… although Kirika had found another use for it, one she found vastly more appealing.

Kirika loved the feel of Mireille squeezed so close against her body, so warm and so supple and smooth. With her eyes firmly shut, the girl's other senses-particularly touch and hearing-were heightened to a degree, permitting her to truly bask in Mireille's presence. With every breath she took, Kirika inhaled the tantalising, natural scent of the woman-a spicy and yet fresh and sweet aroma that flooded her sense of smell wonderfully, engulfing her in the very essence of her partner. Meanwhile, her left arm, draped across Mireille's taut stomach, rose and fell softly in time with the blonde's breathing, accentuating the somewhat ticklish but more than pleasant sensation of their skin touching one another's. The bare flesh of Mireille's abdomen felt… nice… under Kirika's own of her arm, and she had to refrain from giving in to the yearning to rub her hand all over her partner's tummy and trace the contours of the fine muscles beneath… although she couldn't resist fidgeting just a tiny bit.

Kirika's heart swelled in her chest. It was all simply heavenly. She adored waking up snuggled against Mireille; there was nothing better to greet another day with than tightly hugging the woman she loved. She would have liked it if that hug was returned however, but Kirika was happy with any affection she received from her partner, no matter how small. Mireille just wasn't a really affectionate woman, that was all. Or at least rarely openly. There was something else that Mireille had yet to do this morning, if indeed the mood would strike her to do so. Kirika did her best to contain the mounting level of anticipation welling up inside her, lest she ruin her outwardly peaceful façade and consequently destroy any chances that her partner would show her-albeit surreptitious-fondness for her.

Sometimes, when Mireille thought that Kirika was fast asleep, the woman would… touch her, or perhaps more precisely, *caress* her. She would normally begin tentatively, mainly focusing on gently running her fingers through Kirika's hair for a number of minutes. However, Mireille would apparently soon tire of that particular activity and move on to others to amuse herself with. While Kirika liked the feeling of her partner playing with her short hair, it was her subsequent ministrations that the girl enjoyed the most. Mireille would every so often actually bring a hand up to her face and trail her fingertips over her cheeks, stroking them tenderly. And, if Kirika was really lucky, the blonde would even outline her slightly parted lips, sometimes daringly dipping shallowly in between them, as if seeking access inside the warm, wet cavity they guarded. Yes, she especially liked it when Mireille caressed her lips. The woman's touch was so soft, feather-light, but Kirika found it tantalising beyond compare. It was all she could do not to shiver in delight or even emit a blissful sound of approval. But she knew that any such outbursts would scare Mireille's delicate fingertips away.

Kirika wasn't exactly sure why Mireille's touch elicited such… excitement within her. All she knew was that she loved it to such an extent that she very much looked forward to waking up in the morning. However, she wished that Mireille felt comfortable enough to show her such physical affection candidly whenever the impulse took her no matter what time of day or night, rather than covertly while the woman believed her to be snoozing soundly. But perhaps that was too much to hope for from Kirika's aloof partner. Indeed, lately even Mireille's regular morning indulgences were lessening in duration and lacking the intimacy of prior 'sessions'. It had started following their meeting with Breffort-with Soldats. With the advent of their return to a life of killing.

Sure enough, after only a few minutes of half-heartedly fondling Kirika's short locks, the girl heard Mireille exhale heavily and the blonde's touch disappear from her head. Kirika tried not to let the disappointment and desolation overwhelm her. She really missed those past mornings now. She missed the old times. It seemed like Mireille truly was starting to pull away from her, and on more than a mere physical level. The morning would come when the woman probably wouldn't even stay in bed with her for a single minute in excess after waking up. The prospect saddened Kirika, further lowering her already waning spirits, but she supposed she shouldn't be too surprised. Assassins were expected to be cold, unfeeling individuals. It was no wonder Mireille was becoming like her old self again. Maybe that was actually her real self.

Still, even if Mireille did revert to her former standoffish and frosty nature, Kirika's feelings for her would not change in the slightest. She would still be utterly besotted with the woman with all that she was, heart and soul. After all, Mireille had not always been cordial to Kirika… but that had not stopped the girl from falling completely and hopelessly in love with her.

Kirika ceased her veneer of oblivious slumber when she felt and heard Mireille free herself from her embrace and climb out of the bed. Her breathing paused for a moment as she swallowed the build up of moisture in her mouth, before it resumed at a different pace, and then flicked open her brown eyes… and was greeted by the unexpected but oddly sublime sight of the twin porcelain globes of Mireille's perfect bottom, unabashedly on display for her suddenly very keen gaze. To Kirika's disappointment, the spectacle only lasted the briefest of instances before Mireille readjusted the large shirt she was wearing, but it was enough to permanently burn the privileged image in the girl's mind.

Kirika blinked several times and swallowed once again, this time a tad harder than before; almost a gulp. She wasn't certain why she had found the sight of Mireille's naked rear end so… fascinating? Was that the word? Or perhaps mesmerising was a better term? In all honestly, Kirika couldn't quite ascertain what the feeling she had experienced was either. Something between captivation and… exhilaration, was it? Whatever it was, she still wondered why her partner's unclothed posterior was so interesting to her in the first place. It was just another part of Mireille's body, after all; it simply served a function, in this case, to help in the woman's mobility. It was nothing special. So then why did that area continue to attract Kirika's attention unbidden even now that it was concealed behind a layer of cloth? Was it because of the very fact that normally it *was* hidden, out of general propriety? But Mireille's bottom wasn't the only place the blonde kept covered, and so far Kirika hadn't reacted in the same way to those other particular private spots… or was that because she had never observed them unfettered by clothing?

Kirika sighed quietly. For the moment, it was all simply beyond her understanding. Perhaps she should pay more attention to her feelings when looking upon Mireille's body in the future, undressed or not. She was vaguely aware that her partner was pretty-no, beautiful. Certainly, she had witnessed an abundant amount of people turn their heads to catch an additional glimpse of the ravishing blonde when they were outside of the apartment, with something akin to appreciation shining in their eyes. Kirika found it pleasant to gaze upon Mireille too, although the woman's physical splendour was not what captivated her so. Mireille was just Mireille to Kirika-her partner and the person who she loved dearly. The only person who mattered in the world. That Mireille was also an exceptional example of beauty didn't dawn on Kirika very often, not until outsiders reacted in such a way to make that truth obvious. Like that boy, Simon Pierpont. The darkhaired girl didn't like how he talked and looked at Mireille. He didn't look upon her in innocent appreciation, but rather Kirika believed his leers-and remarks too-were demeaning in nature. It didn't sit well with Kirika. It made her feel… cross.

Mireille announced that she was going to take a shower, ending Kirika's analytical musings. The girl watched Mireille emotionlessly as the blonde walked smartly to the bathroom and entered, closing the door behind her. Kirika's brown eyes remained riveted to the woman's swaying backside for the entire time.

Kirika flopped over onto her back in the bed when she heard the toilet flush from the bathroom, shortly followed by the sound of running tap water. Mireille would take a while in there-she always did. However, she didn't usually have a shower so early after just awakening. At least, she hadn't before that day of the car bomb incident. Ordinarily, Mireille would stay in her pyjamas for hours, sometimes lingering in bed with Kirika for a stretch after rousing, simply chatting lazily about nothing in particular, and then later perhaps partaking in a long, relaxed, cooked breakfast with the soft-spoken girl. While Kirika had sometimes slept late into the morning due to her recovering bullet wound, causing those occasions to be sporadic at best, it had only made her cherish them all the more. Twice as much, now. Mireille had been getting up earlier and earlier these past few days-it didn't seem she had time to spare for pleasant luxuries with Kirika anymore. But it was understandable. Really, it was.

Kirika was glad that Mireille at least still retired to bed at the same time she did-the night when the woman had remained awake to examine Soldats' intelligence reports aside. Kirika needed her partner in bed next to her. Sleep would no longer claim her unless Mireille was in the same bed with her, the blonde's comforting presence seeming to act as a soothing influence on the girl, lulling her easily into a deep, peaceful slumber. Yes, Kirika should be thankful for what she still had, regardless of the things she was evidently losing… or had already lost.

Kirika heard the shower starting in the bathroom, signalling to her that Mireille had finished thoroughly washing her face and neck with the strange concoctions that were essential for pure and healthy skin-or so the woman had once sworn to her. Kirika should get up and begin preparing breakfast. Mireille would like that, to be greeted with a readymade repast when she completed her morning ablutions.

The taciturn girl turned her head slowly to the right and placed a hand where her partner had lain several minutes before. The impression in the mattress of Mireille's slender form was still present, although the warmth of her body had long since left the bed. Abandoned it. The imprint, half ringed by rumpled bedcovers, was only a mere afterimage of Mireille, a shadow that would in time no longer even exist.

Kirika's eyelids drooped somewhat, her mood sinking just a little more. She ought to start breakfast.

* * *

Mireille carefully stepped into the bathtub-her clothes having been all shed as soon as she had begun her meticulous skincare and hygiene routine earlier-mindful of any residual water there that could cause her to lose her footing, and then closed the pearl-coloured shower curtain behind her. She picked up the handheld showerhead from its cradle by the bath's singular faucet, and after turning it on and adjusting the water temperature to her liking-in the meantime keeping the spray directed prudently away from her-she then attached it to a clip bolted roughly two-thirds of the way up on the wall bordering one side of the tub, effectively simulating a standard shower.

Mireille closed her eyes and faced the showerhead, simply letting the comfortably warm cascade of water drench her all over, slicking her long blonde hair back and clapping it to her scalp, and at the same time liberally soaking her body. The heat of the water was soothing to the Corsican, lulling her senses somewhat, and as a result, her mind started to wander. Inexorably, her thoughts soon turned to what had happened yesterday… or rather, what *hadn't* happened. Mireille and Kirika's unsuccessful attempt to quickly and quietly kill Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu would have scores of consequences, most, if not every one, grave. It would have been so much simpler if the two men had just rolled over and died without any trouble instead of putting up a fight. Now the blonde and her partner could look forward to a long, drawn out duel with the false Noir, one that would be undeniably several times more perilous than a mere assassination job against a pair of unsuspecting foes… if Vincent and Ryosuke really had been unsuspecting. Mireille supposed it didn't matter anymore; Kaede's Black Hands knew of her and Kirika now, perhaps not their identity as the one-time true Noir, but at the very least that they shared the same vocation.

Mireille sighed, the sound of her soft breath barely perceptible above the drone of water beating a dull tune against the shower curtain behind her. It was all going to be so much harder now. At first she had been angry at her failure, knowing implicitly what it meant for her and Kirika-especially Kirika-but after a good night's sleep, she had become sorrowfully resigned. There was nothing she could do but continue down the black path she had chosen to follow… and see it through to its conclusion. Hopefully, the conclusion would be Ryosuke and Vincent in the ground with her and Kirika left unscathed… on a physical level at any rate. Mireille was practically certain their foray back into the lives of professional killers would have a lasting impact on them both, in particular on Kirika's rather fragile psyche.

Kirika. Mireille didn't know what she was going to do about the girl. She was aware that her partner was unhappy, but she didn't know how to approach her about it. But while Mireille dithered, plagued by the uncertainty of what exactly to do or say to her Japanese counterpart to make things better, Kirika seemed to be gradually sinking further and further into depression. It… hurt Mireille to see the quiet girl like that while she herself was unable to figure out how to aid in allaying her sadness. The woman felt so helpless. And that bleak, frustrating sentiment made her irritated as well, which she feared would wrongly manifest itself as bitterness towards Kirika, the source of all the feelings. Already Mireille was becoming short with the darkhaired girl, the incident at Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental coming to mind. She recognised it would probably only get worse.

Mireille shook her head angrily at it all, and, opening her eyes, reached for the shampoo, squirting a dollop in the palm of one hand before rubbing the mixture all over the tresses plastered to her head and back, made a dark blonde shade by the water saturating them. It wasn't fair. She and Kirika should be living a peaceful existence again, not preparing to clash with two other assassins. Mireille placed the blame squarely on her own shoulders. She should have tried harder yesterday, she should have anticipated Vincent's manoeuvre, she should have-!

Mireille ground her teeth, massaging the shampoo into her scalp a little more vigorously than necessary. She should have *succeeded!* If she had done so, Kirika would not be brooding at present and she herself would not be despairing over her inability to help the poor girl!

Mireille rinsed the froth of shampoo out of her hair and picked up a bottle of conditioner, applying the viscous liquid inside to her locks with both hands. She began driving her fingers deeply into her wet mass of hair, slowly and methodically coating the blonde mane with the slippery solution. The woman simply wasn't good with relationships, not that she'd had any notable ones to speak of before. She just wasn't familiar with them. Regarding Kirika, she was basically-and rather blindly-feeling her way as she went. And now, she had reached an apparently impassable wall. The only thing she could think of to do was eliminate the cause of all of her and her partner's turmoil: the false Noir. But to accomplish that now, they were going to require more help.

Mireille retrieved a sponge and a bar of soap from the dish affixed to the wall at the front end of the bath, and commenced lathering her body with a copious amount of foamy suds. Today she planned to visit Simon, for one to deliver his outstanding fee, and another to enlist his services once again. She would need him constantly probing for the emergence of Ryosuke and his companion's aliases in any hotel guest lists excluding Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental. It would doubtless cost her a fortune-the little pervert would make her pay through the nose for such a request, along with additional payments in the form of undressing leers and boorish suggestive comments-but it was unavoidable.

Mireille would not rely solely on the hacker however, she also had supplementary resources in the form of street-level informants; small time snitches who noted the traffic in Paris' underworld. The Corsican didn't have much faith that the lowlifes whose palms she intended to grease would sight Ryosuke and Vincent, even if the duo did stand out a little-a little too much for smart professional assassins in Mireille's opinion-unless the false Noir actually mingled with the criminal circuit in the city, but they might get lucky. Every little bit helped, after all. And price was no object to Mireille if it speeded her and Kirika's escape from the black path.

There was a soft knock on the bathroom door, causing Mireille to reflexively look over her shoulder even though the shower curtain, made hazy by wisps of rising steam, blocked her view.

"Breakfast is almost ready," came Kirika's rather hesitant voice from the other side of the door, scarcely audible.

"Okay," Mireille called back, detaching the showerhead and using it to quickly and efficiently wash the build-up of soap and conditioner from her body and hair respectively, cutting her ordinarily long shower short. She couldn't help but smile faintly, although it was a touch melancholic. Despite the desolate transformation in their lives, and her obvious aversion to it, Kirika was still as obliging as ever. Mireille wished she could return her partner's kind consideration properly… if only she knew how.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Okay, so the fluffiness was polluted by some coarse flecks here and there. Oh well. You should have suspected as much! ^_^

Bathroom layout was used from the Newtype image.

And Kirika meditates on Mireille's butt... LOL. ^_^


	6. Allies and Adversaries

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The sixth chapter.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 6 - Allies and Adversaries

Mireille stepped up to the cashier's counter inside Simon Pierpont's decrepit back alley computer store façade, her and Kirika's first stop on a long list for today, and crooked a single blonde eyebrow at the jittery and scruffy boy behind it; 'Ezza' his name was, if she remembered correctly from her last visit. Why was it hackers, whether they were merely feeble aspiring ones or genuinely accomplished masters, had to have such bizarre-and more often than not, inane-aliases? If it even *was* an alias-Mireille wasn't sure which possibility she found more pathetic. It must have been an image thing. Certainly, assassins were known to engage in similar habits also, donning titles carefully chosen to instil both fear and awe in all those who heard it. It was good for business, in mutual respects to garnering clients and intimidating targets. Who didn't quake in terror if they discovered that Noir was seeking their heads, after all? Mireille herself was not much for titles; she preferred to have people's faith put in her skills rather than how imaginative her adopted pseudonym was, but she had to admit utilising one that carried great prestige did tend to come in handy sometimes. Of course conversely, it was apt to also attract unwarranted trouble that could have otherwise been avoided… as in the case of Ryosuke and Vincent, if the men were indeed aware of the Corsican and her Japanese counterpart's old identity.

Ezza, to his credit, did not waste any time on idle chatter, apparently understanding by the blonde's terse gesture that she and Kirika were here in the dusty shop to see his friend, Simon-or 'Phayzed', as was his asinine alias-and nothing more. Instead he smiled tremulously at Mireille and then with an abrupt turn scrambled to open the door behind him that led to the building's basement, fumbling for several moments with the rusty brass knob. Mireille was glad Ezza had not tried to spark up a conversation with her. This morning she was definitely not in the mood for civilities… although in truth she hadn't really been for the last couple of days.

Mireille was a little surprised when Ezza opted to escort her and Kirika down the rickety steps into Simon's computer den, leading the gloomy way ahead of the pair while occasionally sparing the blonde a nervous glance over his shoulder, but the woman didn't dwell on it. She was aware that she sometimes had that affect on people. It could be somewhat irritating-Simon's obnoxious behaviour came to mind-but being endowed with pleasant looks did have its uses from time to time. Guards-most notably male guards-typically were susceptible to feminine charms, and doubly so if they belonged to a pretty face, a weakness that Mireille had taken advantage of all too often. Her attractive exterior had loosened tight lips and dulled sharp senses many times before in the past, allowing her to perform hits with added ease. Mireille considered her beauty simply another tool of her trade, a valuable and effective one. Although, the Corsican had to confess, she did take a smidgen of pride in her appearance. A woman did have to look her best.

When the trio arrived at the bottom of the stairs, they were greeted by the predictable sight of Simon sitting in front of his multitude of computer monitors, gazing avidly at the screens at the same time he typed madly away at one of his myriad of keyboards. Mireille wondered if the boy ever managed to tear himself away from his computers and venture out from his basement hideaway into the light of day. Probably not very often, if the grimy mattresses and blankets stacked in one corner of the dim-lighted room, along with a less-than-pristine looking refrigerator positioned in another, were any indications. And Simon did have a rather pasty complexion, if one looked past the red pimples dotted liberally on his face. By all accounts, it seemed as if the boy lived here in the damp and dark basement below the computer store. On more than one occasion during her visits Mireille had mused on where his parents were and how he had come to occupy and possibly even own a building, even if it was more or less part of a slum… and the poorer part at that. Perhaps he was merely squatting. In reality it didn't really matter to the woman, however. Her deliberations were simply casual ones-she didn't possess much care or interest for the hacker and his life beyond that one generally held for a useful business associate. Simon was a resource that Mireille every so often tapped, and that was all. He was not her friend.

Mireille saw through the murk of the room that Simon wore a silver set of headphones over his ears-their speakers no doubt pumping some sort of dance beat at a deafening volume against his eardrums-and, as per usual, was dressed untidily in a shabby pair of blue jeans and faded t-shirt, the logo printed on the back of the latter garment having deteriorated to such a degree that only a washed-out and warped red rectangle was recognisable. As a result of the distracting mixture of listening to music via headphones and seemingly being entirely spellbound by the numerous glowing screens before him, the teen did not turn around at her, Kirika and their guide's appearance. That boy really should be more attentive to his surroundings. If Mireille and Kirika had been here to execute Simon rather than talk to him instead, he wouldn't have stood a chance… not that he would have even if he had been alerted, naturally.

Ezza quickly scurried over to his oblivious friend and prodded him in the back with a finger, causing Simon to emit a startled yelp and jerk upright in his seat. The self-proclaimed expert hacker pulled off his headphones and let them dangle around his neck as he swivelled around in his seat, the tinny, distant rhythm of manic music able to be heard spilling out from the two uncovered speakers. Simon's expression was that of surprise and some embarrassment, but when he realised just who was standing in the basement with him it quickly transformed into one of anxiety, and then a fraction of a second later-to Mireille's vexation-to a countenance that contained more than little a glimmer of lewd intent. Mireille could already tell that this meeting was going to be a tedious lesson in patience and self-control. But the Corsican was confident she was up to the challenge. She had to be if she wanted Simon's much needed assistance.

"Mireille! You're back!" Simon exclaimed in jubilation, grinning merrily… if a bit lecherously. "And you've brought your cute pal along again too!" he added as his eyes settled on Kirika, also favouring the girl with his broad smile. He then returned his unwelcome attention to Mireille, flicking his eyebrows at her in a suggestive fashion. "Can't get enough of me, huh?"

Mireille ignored Simon's greeting and grating remark and instead reached into her handbag and retrieved a rolled up bundle of Euros from its depths, before unceremoniously tossing the cash in the boy's direction. "Your payment for last time," she said simply as the collection of bills bounced off Simon's chest, causing the boy to hurriedly struggle to catch them, juggling the roll in his hands for a number of seconds until he succeeded in maintaining a firm grip on them.

"Mmm, Mireille bearing money; is there any better combo in the world?" Simon commented as he flipped through the bundle of notes, counting them carefully. Abruptly, he stopped and looked up from the cash to Ezza, who seemed to be trying to blend into the darkness of the basement and stay unnoticed-and not doing a very good job of it, either. "What the hell are you still doing down here?" the hacker demanded callously, frowning at his 'friend'. "Get your ass back upstairs and watch the store! There might be shit-all up there, but damn it, what *is* up there is *my* shit! I don't want anybody swiping it!" Simon commanded in a harsh tone, thrusting a pointed finger at the flight of stairs leading to the ground floor. Mireille surmised that he didn't like anybody other than himself gawking at her. How petty.

Ezza hesitated for a moment, appearing caught somewhere between being crestfallen and humiliated, but eventually succumbed to the inevitable and after a parting disappointed look at Mireille, headed for the stairs and plodded back up them with slumped shoulders and a lowered gaze.

"It's so hard to find good help, you know?" Simon sighed as he watched a dejected Ezza leave. "Ever since Francois left to go to college about a month ago I've been stuck with that loser. All he does all day is read comics! And lately he's been bugging the hell outta me about *you*, Mireille! He's always wanting to know who that 'hot debutante type' was who came by the other day. Damn idiot usually kept his mouth shut and his nose in a comic most of the time, but now-! To think I wished that he would talk more often, geez!" He sighed again and then returned his gaze to Mireille and Kirika, most particularly to the latter. "Say, where would I find someone like her to help me out?" he asked, motioning with a tilt of his head to Kirika. "I think I'd like staring at a pretty face all day instead of Ezza's ugly mug if I had the choice" He gave Kirika an expectant half-smile and leaned forward slightly in his seat, doubtless waiting for a response, but the darkhaired girl merely looked at the lecher's mottled face blankly. "But I guess she doesn't talk much either," Simon said dryly, flopping back into his chair again. "Does she even speak French?"

"I have another task for you," Mireille said grimly, not wanting to become bogged down in another one of Simon's childish little banter sessions teeming with uncouth innuendos. And with the mood she was in right now, it would most likely be hazardous to his health. "The two men I had you search for before; I need to find them again."

"What?" Simon whined, his curiosity in Kirika vanishing. "Why? Didn't I do a kickass job?"

"The 'why' is not your concern. Just do the deed I have asked of you," Mireille stated coldly.

"Okay, if that's what you want," Simon said evenly, abandoning his perverted inclinations in the face of the assassin's frosty temper… or at least frostier than usual temper. "But it ain't gonna be free, you know…."

"I didn't expect it to be. You'll find an additional one hundred Euros in the payment I've just imparted to you… and which you incidentally failed to mention," Mireille said, a slight edge manifesting in her voice with her last words. Simon merely smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head, just below where his hair was dyed a discoloured green. "And the same bonus as before applies." Mireille paused for a second, delivering a level glare at Simon, who squirmed in his seat and sensibly didn't protest about the payment's sum… although the assassin wouldn't be shocked if he did at a later date. "I need to find these people *immediately*," the blonde woman continued sternly. "Moreover, there is considerable likelihood that the men will be trying to keep a low profile. You may find it difficult to track them down a second time."

Simon smirked confidently, relaxing back in his padded leather chair and placing his hands behind his head. "I wouldn't worry about that," he said self-assuredly. "Computer networks aren't the only form of network I can easily get access to…."

Mireille arched a questioning eyebrow, prompting the hacker to elaborate. She was positive that he would-she knew he would not pass up the opportunity to tout his own capabilities.

"I know a bunch of dudes who, shall we say, stumble upon useful stuff now and then," Simon explained proudly. "I use 'em sometimes when networking methods fail-although that doesn't happen a lot, what with *my* brilliant skills. But it's a precaution; I don't want to let down my customers and lose the hard earned rep I've gained, you know? It took bloody ages to get to the position I'm in today."

"By whatever means; utilise your informants if you deem them necessary. Contact me in the standard manner if you find the people I'm looking for," Mireille ordered, before turning around swiftly to depart, with Kirika obediently following suit.

"'If' I find them?" Simon parroted to Mireille's retreating back. "Oh, have a little faith! I'll find your two playboys in a flash, I bet! Once, twice, three times-it doesn't matter! I can find anybody in this city, *anybody!* No one can hide from my-"

Mireille tuned out the rest of Simon's egotistical self-accolades as she climbed the basement stairs back to street level. The gangly perverted sociopath wasn't the only person she and Kirika had to rely on to find Ryosuke and Vincent… mercifully. The Corsican had many, many founts of information scattered all across Paris, some more reliable than others, but all were competent snitches and rumourmongers. They had proven worthwhile in the past, like when Mireille had sought answers to the car bombing earlier in the week, to name one example. Perhaps they would again… or so she hoped. The false Noir would have already fled Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental by now-the blonde didn't think they would be *that* arrogant not to do so. Locating them again would be… trying, to say the least.

Of course, there was also the possibility that Mireille and Kirika weren't the only ones doing the hunting. Ryosuke and Vincent could be hunting *them* at this very same instant. Even the Corsican and her partner's apartment may no longer be the safe haven it currently was in the near future. Soldats-until the final trials at any rate-had permitted them the luxury of a sanctuary in the form of the apartment, but these new foes would not have such qualms. There would be no sure refuge from the conflicts ahead.

That is, if Ryosuke and Vincent truly were after Noir. It would help if Mireille knew the rationale behind the pair's coming to Paris; right now she was completely in the dark. Breffort supposedly knew nothing also, or if he did, he was not sharing. But Mireille was not foolish enough to depend solely on Soldats support, obviously. Maybe her sources would learn of Ryosuke and Vincent's motives for entering her and her counterpart's stomping grounds too. It was a very slim prospect, however.

Nevertheless, Mireille had to find out, even if she had to deduce the reasons herself. It would give her and Kirika an advantage, gifting them with insight on their adversaries' potential movements. Besides… she couldn't quell the disquieting feeling that Ryosuke and Vincent's mystery motivations would have a further impact on their already damaged lives, beyond forcing them back onto the black path… an even more harmful one.

But as Mireille looked discreetly over her shoulder at Kirika's downcast face, she wondered if that were truly possible.

* * *

The dying rays of daylight could be seen through the unshuttered windows of the apartment as Kirika walked into the living room a step behind Mireille, the lingering sunbeams outlining the tops of the buildings on the horizon in a soft amber glow. Kirika had been roaming around the city for the better part of the day with her partner, convening with all kinds of people the blonde seemingly was familiar with-some of which who had made the girl somewhat edgy. They had spent a considerable amount of the daylight hours in the shadier areas of Paris; the rundown parts where Kirika knew she had to be continually on her guard-or at least more so in respects to the other parts of the capitol-lest she and Mireille find themselves in a bad situation. The majority of Mireille's contacts had turned out to be not the most upstanding of citizens. Kirika sometimes wondered how somebody like her sophisticated partner had become acquainted with such corrupt characters.

Despite their resolute efforts to ascertain their adversaries' new place of residence, Kirika and Mireille had discovered nothing bar unsubstantiated hearsay, none of which that was worth investigating. However, the day's labours had not been a total waste; at the very least they had planted seeds in Mireille's associates, seeds that could grow into orchards bearing valuable fruits of information in the future. The woman's contacts were now aware that she and Kirika were looking for two Asian hitmen who had recently come to Paris, and henceforth would be on the lookout for individuals matching the descriptions they had been provided with. Kirika was confident that she and Mireille would find Ryosuke and Vincent within the week… although she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that.

Mireille strode purposefully towards the computer sitting on the billiard table immediately after she entered room, as though she had blinders on. The enthusiastic sight froze Kirika in her tracks, the drowsy girl having been making her way for the bedroom. However, she really shouldn't have expected anything different-Mireille appeared to be throwing herself whole-heartedly into their new crisis, after all. She probably wanted to check her email for any updates on the search for their enemies-she was very committed to her profession. Yes, Kirika should not have been surprised… but it didn't make her partner's action any less dispiriting. They hadn't even eaten dinner yet, not that the introverted girl felt she could stomach any meal. Her appetite seemed to have forsaken her lately.

Kirika eyelids sank a little, but it had nothing to do with her fatigue. She exhaled softly, and then resumed her walk to the bedroom, before climbing up the short series of steps into the room. She quickly shed her parka, laying it out gingerly on the sofa nearby the bed, glad to be rid of it… along with its hidden and deadly cargo. Another day had passed without Kirika having to fire her gun at a living being, for which she was exceedingly thankful. For at least this night, barring unforseen incidents, she could maintain her pacifism… and maintain her dominance over the darkness.

Kirika released another slow and quiet breath, this one of obvious relief, as if a great weight had been lifted from her slim shoulders. Although, if truth be told, one had been.

Kirika walked back to the bedroom's steps, parking herself tiredly on the centre one with her back to the wall. "Yoisho," she intoned reflexively as she sat, a habit of hers.

Her eyes unconsciously moved to include Mireille in her vision seated in front of the computer, the blonde navigating its mouse in her right hand on the green felt surface of the billiard table and occasionally clicking it, the noise breaking the otherwise silent atmosphere of the apartment. Mireille was evidently undisturbed by Kirika's earlier soft emittance, staring at her computer's monitor intently, a slight frown creasing her brow, while her mouth was drawn into a thin line. It was an expression Kirika had observed countless times-one of a dedicated contract killer digesting new intelligence on a target. Mireille must be in her element. Kirika should feel happy for her.

Kirika dropped her gaze to the floor and drew her knees to her chest, enfolding her arms around them, hugging herself into a ball. The gap was widening between herself and Mireille; it was clear as glass to the darkhaired girl. And the worst thing was, Kirika didn't know what to do to stop it.

She had thought that after the events at the Manor things would be different between her and Mireille, and certainly, they had been… at least for a time. But now it seemed as if those welcome, pleasant changes that had occurred were in reality only temporary ones. The upheaval regarding Ryosuke and Vincent was only the first obstacle their new relationship had encountered, but already the pleasing changes were decaying away because of it, regressing everything back to the stage they had been in beforehand. Back to a less favourable stage, one of apathy and detachment. Kirika had believed her relationship with Mireille was stronger than that. Maybe she had been mistaken. Maybe she had been mistaken about a lot of things. Maybe….

Or it could be that this was what a romantic relationship was like. But while Kirika had no experience in love, she was reasonably certain it wasn't supposed to be this way. She had seen other couples interact with each other when she had ventured out of the apartment with Mireille; they smiled and laughed together, and touched one other, embraced one other. They *talked* to one another. Kirika didn't do any of those things with Mireille, and even in the past, she hadn't really done so either, not to the extent other people did at any rate. Was her relationship with her partner somehow different than other people's? It was a possibility; one the girl had deliberated on before.

Almost ever since her love for her partner had been revealed, Kirika had tried to educate herself a little on affairs of the heart by studying some of the magazines that appeared to deal with the subject Mireille frequently read during her spare time, but none of them had provided the help the quiet girl sought. For some reason the publications only wrote on relationships between women and men, and Kirika hadn't been sure whether or not what was penned applied to her apparently diverse situation. She had also wondered why she couldn't find anything on partnerships involving two females. It had been frustrating and confusing. It still was. She really should have addressed her questions to Mireille; the worldly woman would know of such matters. Perhaps things wouldn't have degenerated between Kirika and her partner if the girl had been wiser to how love worked.

Or maybe… or maybe it was *her*. Maybe there was something wrong with Kirika herself. Could it be that Mireille was progressively falling out of love with her? It was a horrible, gut-wrenching notion, but one Kirika couldn't ignore, no matter how much she wanted to. After all, their relationship was relapsing to its former state. Maybe Kirika's lack of knowledge on the topic of love was the cause. She could be doing something incorrectly-or not doing something she was meant to be doing-that was making Mireille pull away from her. Or, in the absolute worst case, the woman simply might not feel the same way about Kirika anymore. If that were correct, then there was nothing the introverted girl could do to repair the damage in their relationship-there would be no point; no point to even go on, really. It was awful to even contemplate. Truly, it was Kirika's most dreaded nightmare.

Kirika swallowed hard and looked up from the floor, returning her sad brown eyes to Mireille. There was a sudden strange ache in her chest as she gazed upon her partner's beautiful but cold features. She didn't know what it was, or even its origin, but it… it hurt. It was a pain more intense than all of the physical agonies she had suffered during her years of life combined. Kirika had to resist the compulsion to clutch at her chest, the instinctive action the result of a fervent need to somehow assuage the unseen but open wound. She wondered if she had been injured at some point earlier in the day without her realising it, as impossible as it sounded. Whatever the mysterious ache in her chest was, Kirika hoped it would pass soon. With two enemy assassins to contend with, she had to stay in peak condition. And also the pain… it was verging on unbearable. She didn't think she could endure it for an extended length of time. It was as if her insides were being consumed.

The distance between Kirika and Mireille, from the bedroom steps to the billiard table, was only a matter of metres, but to the former girl it was the equivalent of a vast, gaping chasm, forcibly separating her from her love. She and Mireille were supposed to be partners, they were supposed to be in love, but Kirika… Kirika felt… lonely. Maybe that was the cause of the ache in her chest. Loneliness. Mireille had always been a reasonably aloof person, but Kirika had witnessed the warm heart beneath the blonde's cool exterior-she knew one existed. Now, however, it was as though the woman's icy barriers were up once more, putting distance between her heart and Kirika's, and in turn isolating herself. And isolating the younger girl as well.

Kirika was aware she shouldn't feel lonely; she had her partner, Mireille, by her side-it was all she could have asked for, and in the past, all she had required to live. But no… Mireille may be by her side in a physical sense, but not in the sense Kirika wished her to be. Noir… it was a name for two, a fact the girl had taken joy in before. While she no longer considered herself or Mireille as Noir, that principle-and the happiness that came with it-still held true. Kirika and Mireille remained in a partnership of a sort… but it was starting to lose the distinctive something that had made it special-unique. And with that mounting loss, the feeling of loneliness increased.

Behind and just to the left of Mireille, Kirika caught sight of the potted orchid residing on its spot on the small square table by a window. The outer edges of several of the large green leaves were a rotten, decomposing brown; the result of neglect largely on Mireille's part, but Kirika was also guilty of forgetting to water the plant some mornings. The advent of a fake Noir had evidently distracted both of them to varying degrees. Oddly, the sight of the mistreated pot plant amplified the pain in Kirika's chest even more.

The sad girl averted her gaze from Mireille and the orchid, returning it to the floorboards. She hugged herself a little tighter. Noir…. Even if Kirika didn't think of herself and Mireille as the legendary pair of assassins any more, some traits of the ancient and feared title still lingered with them-Noir was a name synonymous with strife and anguish.

* * *

"Noir," Vin uttered with veneration to the apathetic bartender. He leaned forwards towards the grubby man, resting one forearm on the bar, and wagged his eyebrows meaningfully-and also expectantly. However, to his obvious disappointment, the bartender simply looked at him with a bored gaze.

"Look, do you want a drink or not?" the unshaven man said impatiently. "I *do* have other customers."

Vin sighed wearily and straightened, running a hand through his black hair. "Come, don't give brush! Noir, *Noir!* Doesn't mean anything you? I *know* that…."

Ryosuke turned away from the irritating spectacle of his partner attempting to persuade the bartender of Slick Chicks, with his limited grasp of the French language, into letting them see the manager of the establishment, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from inside his coat, capturing one between his lips. Fetching his silver lighter from his left pocket, the white-haired man lit up the cigarette and took a long drag, flipping the lighter shut with a metallic click as he did so. One would think that a poseur like Vin would have made it a point to master the 'language of love'.

Ryosuke breathed out a stream of smoke from his nose, the resulting plumb joining countless others on their ascents towards the ceiling of the club. Slick Chicks' interior resembled that of any 'gentleman's' nightspot regardless of the city it called home. Men of various social standings-ranging from the lower class to the common salary sort-were everywhere, hooting and whistling appreciatively while blatantly leering at the scanty clad women who paraded around the room shamelessly, willingly degrading themselves for measly change. The whores either danced wantonly as they shed their tawdry-and sparse-attire on stage under the lustful grins and delighted calls of numerous onlookers; served drinks to gropers who took pleasure in availing themselves of a waitress's close proximity; or treated some of the more wealthy customers to select delicacies in the form of lap dances, before leading them through a red-curtained doorway at the back of the main room for no doubt further… services.

Had these women no self-respect? Being around such degenerates made Ryosuke's skin crawl. He felt filthy just being in the same room with them. Soiled. They were different from Fumiko, and to a lesser degree, Claire, back in Yokohama.

Ryosuke put his cigarettes and lighter back in their respective pockets in his ebony coat, and pointedly averted his eyes as one waitress dressed in red fishnet stockings and a matching bustier-a combination that revealed a considerable amount of skin to the casual observer-smiled seductively and tried to meet his gaze while she cleared a table. Disgusting. Ordinarily he would not even entertain the notion of setting foot in a place like this, but Vin had eagerly assured him that Slick Chicks was the headquarters of a syndicate that controlled most of Paris' red light district's, Pigalle's, seedy parts and through it the lion's share of the city's illegal drug distribution network. Such influential people were the kind that could possibly provide the support Ryosuke and Vin required to hinder the two new Soldats agents stalking them, and consequently permit them to continue their search for Dominique's 'crucial' artefact. Kaede's trial date was looming too, and Ryosuke wanted to have at least returned to Yokohama by then.

The black-garbed hitmen took another draw on his cigarette and puffed out a cloud of bluish-grey smoke from the corner of his mouth. He only hoped that Vin wasn't using their need for outside help as an excuse to troll Paris' local strip clubs and brothels. Although the flamboyant man's ability to ferret out information was noteworthy and usually produced reliable facts, he had been complaining recently about having visited almost all of the city's old museums and dusty rare antique stores, while not being allowed the opportunity to even so much as catch a glimpse of Paris' famed Can-Can girls of the Moulin Rouge… among numerous other establishments. Moreover, this was the fourth club that Vin had shepherded Ryosuke into tonight. And the three before the triad member had also claimed were the headquarters of some powerful criminal organisation that would be sure to lend them a hand… after he softened them up first, of course. All in all, it did not build much confidence in Ryosuke that he and his partner would not be fruitlessly drifting from one sordid club to another for the remainder of the night.

"Alright!" Vin suddenly exclaimed in Japanese, recalling Ryosuke's attention. The stoic white-haired man turned back to his overly emotional companion, meeting his triumphantly smiling expression with his own dour one. "He's going to get someone to take us to the person in charge," Vin informed Ryosuke, gesturing with his thumb behind the bar in the direction of where the now absent bartender would have been standing. "A 'Mr. Millet', if I'm not mistaken. I've heard that he's a big player around these parts-he should be what we're looking for." He prodded the taller man in the chest a couple of times. "You see? I told you this was the place!"

Ryosuke merely grunted and blew smoke over Vin's head. So they would be permitted to see the king of the degenerates, the one who had gathered all the other scum under his rule. Somehow Ryosuke managed to contain his elation. But sometimes one had to side with demons in order to bring down the devil.

"Ryochan," Vin crooned in a nauseatingly cute voice Ryosuke hated with a passion, looking up at his taller comrade, "I've told you before you shouldn't smoke. It's bad for the skin-" He made a sickly expression as a fog of cigarette smoke was exhaled into his face, causing him to cough and gasp for air. "-And the breath."

"And I've ignored you before," Ryosuke remarked lifelessly. "Take the hint."

Vin pouted but didn't say any more on the subject. Good. Ryosuke felt a migraine coming on. While the low, base lighting of Slick Chicks was comfortable on his eyes, the constant drone of the insipid music the strippers on stage undulated to was starting to create a faint throbbing sensation in the back of his mind. He didn't need his partner nagging him about pointless matters on top of that.

"Hey, baby…" a slurring voice said from the right, causing both Ryosuke and Vin to turn their heads towards the source of the sound. A man in a business suit-who was obviously quite intoxicated-was grinning rakishly at the triad member, his watery eyes smouldering with desire… much to Vin's distaste. "You are one fine looking woman, ya know… what do you say we go into the back, and…?"

"Take a hike, bozo!" Vin yelled scathingly, having no difficulties with his French now. "Go on, get!" he added, making ardent shooing motions with his hands.

"Awww…" the drunkard moaned, but luckily for his sake, staggered away from the area to probably hit on more willing subjects.

"Geez," Vin exhaled heavily, rubbing a temple, "it's moments like these I think I should cut my hair." But he then smirked, before sighing exaggeratedly, his previously annoyed demeanour altering drastically. "Being cursed with such… such… *resplendent* beauty can be so very trying at times…." he declared, as though he were a true hero for even showing his face in public.

Ryosuke ignored him.

Soon after, another man, this one considerably more sober and dressed more stylishly than the last, approached the black clad hitman and his posing partner, instructing them to follow him into the back of the club. Ryosuke and Vin complied, and were led through a door behind the bar and down a long corridor. Cracked grey concrete walls enclosed the two assassins and their escort on either side, illuminated by several weak light bulbs dangling from above, the occasional one flickering on and off. The hard floor was clean however-it had evidently seen a lot of traffic.

Ryosuke and Vin's guide rounded a corner at the end of the hall and opened a brown painted door labelled simply with 'Manager' in blue script a short ways down the right hand wall of the following passage. He ushered them through the doorway, before stepping into the room also, shutting the door behind him. He then positioned himself against the closed door, effectively blocking it and impeding any means of escape if things should turn… unpleasant. Fine. Ryosuke wasn't concerned in the slightest.

Seated at a desk surrounded by about a half-dozen standing goons was 'Mr. Millet', Ryosuke presumed. He was a greying man who looked to be in his late thirties to early forties, with deep wrinkles ravaging his leathery face. The crevices made his features appear hard, but Ryosuke believed even free of them Millet would still have had a harsh countenance. Conversely, his trappings were that of an ordinary businessman; a white shirt, black braces and dark red tie. Ryosuke assumed that whatever clothing the mahogany desk the man was sitting behind was hiding was of a similar style as well.

"So, you two are Noir," Millet intoned with clear skepticism, looking at Ryosuke and Vin as if they were a couple of fools.

That name, Noir. It was one of Dominique's stipulations for the assignment-Ryosuke and his partner were to use the codename, Noir, while in France. At the time, back in Yokohama, it hadn't seemed like a major concern to the white-haired man, but he soon learnt once entering Paris that Noir was a renowned title in Europe, dating back more than a thousand years. It was the name of the greatest assassin ever known. A notorious alias brought unwanted attention, but Vin frequently used it openly, appearing unaware of the danger he could attract. Like now, for instance. Ryosuke felt like a naïve child for agreeing to follow Dominique's order without protest. It was liable to get him and his companion killed. Maybe.

"I wasn't expecting two people, nor two Asians at that," Millet went on, one corner of his lips curving upwards slightly into a condescending lopsided smile. "Noir, indeed…." He bent forward in his plush leather chair, resting his elbows on the desk in front of him. "You may address me as Mr. Millet. Do you have names?"

"You know it," Ryosuke said coldly in French before Vin could react, earning an exasperated look from the shorter man. While Vin was a proficient negotiator, his broken French was not likely to impress people like Millet and his men. Women in this city apparently found it rather endearing, for who knew what reason, but it would be an entirely different story here and now. Millet would likely laugh at Vin, before having him-and Ryosuke-thrown out onto the street. Ryosuke and Vin needed to be taken seriously. Fortunately, Ryosuke spoke fluent French, a talent he had been taught along with his sister under Dominique's tutelage when they were children. It had been at the request of their mother. Back then, years ago when he was merely a gullible child, Ryosuke had thought nothing of it bar the prospect of more homework. But now he was considerably wiser.

Ryosuke marched forwards and sat himself in one of the chairs arranged in front of Millet's desk uninvited, Vin doing likewise in a second seat a moment after him, knowing when to defer to his lead. "There are two young women," Ryosuke began levelly, plucking his cigarette from his lips and flicking some ash onto the rich carpeted floor of the office uncaringly, "who must die."

Millet leaned back in his chair, his expression one of bemusement, but the Japanese hitman could detect unmistakable anger beneath the façade at his 'guest's' disrespectful behaviour. Too bad. Ryosuke didn't have time to dally with words. He wanted Dominique's mission over with so he could return home to Kaede's side. Who knew what lies and corruption that despicable gaijin was feeding to his dear sister without his watchful presence to deter her? Ryosuke wondered if he would still even have a home to return to by the time this insufferable assignment ended.

"Straight and to the point; I like that," Millet said, but Ryosuke could see past his words to the thinly viewed resentment buried underneath. "Let me guess, these two broads are your wives you want offed for the insurance, or to placate your girlfriends or mistresses, am I right? Or perhaps all those reasons are true?"

Vin snorted, and Ryosuke knew he was about to make a clever comment. Quickly, so to forestall his partner from creating a potential threat to the supremacy he had over the conversation, the white-haired assassin continued, disregarding Millet's patronising inquiries as well.

"Two women. We have no pictures. We have no names. But-"

"Then how the hell do you expect us to find them?" one gangster scoffed incredulously off to the right. "Christ, do you think we're-"

"The first's approximately five foot six," Ryosuke went on unabated, his voice raising just a little to counter the hoodlum's interruption. "Caucasian in her early twenties. Blonde hair past shoulder length. Blue eyes. Slim build. Attractive."

"*Very* attractive," Vin amended impishly.

Still Ryosuke kept up his description. "The second is a young girl; a teenager. But still merely a child," the hitman reported. "Asian. Height of five foot or below. Black/brown hair. Brown eyes. Very lean build."

Millet smiled thinly. "Your descriptions are all very well and good," he said conceitedly, "but what makes you even think we're nothing more than business men? That we're the kind of people who can be hired to-"

"Both will be armed," Ryosuke stated firmly, staring into Millet's eyes unwaveringly, talking him down. "They travel together, or near enough together. It can be presumed they live here in Paris." The assassin found no reason to warn Millet or his men that the two young women would probably be quite formidable. Let them discover that fact for themselves.

"Listen!" Millet spat, rising angrily from his seat, his patience obviously at its end. "I don't know who you think you are, but if you think you can come into *my* office in *my* club and *demand* me too-"

Ryosuke reached into his coat, causing a multitude of hands to hastily reach into their own jackets or behind their waists undoubtedly for concealed weapons, but instead of pulling out a firearm as they all most likely had anticipated, the hitman took out a thick wad of bills, tossing it nonchalantly onto Millet's desk. The pile lay there, drawing all eyes-now clearly wide-to it, their weapons forgotten. The amount of Euros in the stack was more than enough for a contract killing of two Soldats flunkies, and a sum Ryosuke was positive would make waves. The first love of all degenerates was money.

"I don't care how you do it," Ryosuke declared in his lifeless voice, "or how you find them, or even how long it takes. Just kill them." He bent forwards, stubbing out his cigarette on Millet's desk. The 'big player' didn't even notice, too busy sinking slowly back into his leather seat, simply staring, his indignation stymied by the spectacle of the considerable pile of Euros just sitting there on the desk before him, ripe for the taking. "You're supposedly the big boys around here," Ryosuke added as he resettled himself in his chair, laying it on thick. "Prove it."

Millet smiled widely and tore his eyes away from the money on his desk, his lackeys' own remaining riveted by the sight. Ryosuke wondered if they had ever in all their worthless lives seen such an amount in cash before.

"I think we can come to an arrangement, my friends," Millet said sweetly in a stomach-turning tone, all smiles now. "But why not kill these women yourselves?" he inquired curiously. "You claim to be the most fearsome assassin-or *assassins*, rather-in this continent's history. Couldn't you just-"

"Do you want the job or not?" Ryosuke said.

"Yes! Yes!" Millet quickly assured him, grabbing the wad of Euros in his greedy hands before his new patron could snatch back the payment.

"Good. You'll get the same sum once the deed is done," Ryosuke informed Millet. "I trust this is to your liking?"

"Indeed it is!" Millet exclaimed enthusiastically, flipping through the stack of money with a thumb before looking up at his men. "Right, lads?"

A resounding series of befuddled but pleased chuckles filled the room, none of the thugs likely believing their luck. Ryosuke took it all in emotionlessly, scanning his violet eyes over the sleazy faces of Millet's goons. His wary gaze abruptly paused on one individual; a man dressed much like his fellows in fashionable attire, for all intents and purposes appearing as a member of Millet's syndicate. Except for one minor detail-he wasn't sharing in their laugh.

Ryosuke's dark-rimmed eyes narrowed slightly, before they resumed their meander. It seemed as if he and Vin had gained new allies this night-a welcome turn of events, in Ryosuke's opinion. But he knew not to relax. No, he could never relax. Allies had the tendency to turn into adversaries in a blink of an eye… and oft times that eye didn't even notice.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

I used 'Ryochan' rather than 'Ryo-chan' since I didn't want to get bogged down in name suffixes in the future. Think of it as a nickname.

Apologies for waiting until this chapter to have a 'Yoisho' moment.

Also apologies for all the stereotypical 'hacker' jibes so far. I know all computer users who think they're hot stuff aren't like that…. *cough*

Yoisho = Hmm… think of it as 'heave-ho' when it involves shifting objects. If it involves sitting down, think of it as the tired sigh one makes when doing so.

Gaijin = Foreigner


	7. Sinners, Act I

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The seventh chapter. The first section of this part contains material that some people may find a little disturbing. Or not. Everybody is so desensitised these days. Writing for unhinged characters sure is fun, though. ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 7 - Sinners, Act I

Kaede Ishinomori examined her series of finely honed instruments through her snow-white bangs with an appraising eye, where they were laid out in a silver tray on a square table before her. Their smooth metallic surfaces glinted vibrantly, reflecting the flames flickering in the fireplace inset on one wall of the lavishly decorated but Spartanly furnished room. During the last session their rigorous use and seen them become quite soiled, requiring them to be thoroughly cleansed and polished until they shone radiantly, almost bathed in a holy aura. Kaede's craft was an art form that called extensively upon her utensils, both exotic and ordinary alike. Even the most everyday of items could be used to beguile a subject closer to enlightenment.

The brick fireplace was the sole source of light in the otherwise gloomy, spacious room, generating an overall sinister atmosphere, the air thick with dark foreboding. Two cast iron pokers rested in the crackling flames of the fireplace, their ends glowing a hot orange, having been in their for a significant amount of time. They would be needed later to prevent the subject's premature departure before they-or he, in this case-had reached the exalted plateau of celestial favour. The human shell was so fragile. But it did serve to restrict blessed illumination to only those whose bodies could endure the hallowed ordeal Kaede so fastidiously administered with her skilled hands. If not, then any unworthy heathen could achieve transcendence.

A willowy, pale hand hovered lazily over the tray of instruments as Kaede mulled her choices, pausing for fleeting moments on each one, although it was an act to heighten the subject's state of anticipation more than anything else. Or rather, his state of *fear*. Fear caused the body to produce adrenaline, resulting in a subject being able to undergo more trials than she or he normally would, and hence, bring them nearer to enlightenment at a faster pace. Nevertheless, Kaede wondered why this subject was still so frightened. He should feel privileged; it wasn't as though she treated all the people under her to this honour. Although, Matsumoto *had* strayed from her fold, betraying her to outsiders and their foul, warped word of law; for whatever reason be it money or a misguided conscience. Naturally, that was one of the primary motivations behind Kaede choosing to bestow the gift of sacred revelation upon him… through *pain*. She would compel the wayward Matsumoto to repent his sins, and in turn, hasten his inevitable journey towards the Heavens, with his soul clean and ready to be judged by the Gods.

Not that Matsumoto could verbally repent. A muffled and pathetic mewling came from the man on Kaede's left as her hand lingered over an electric prod, her slender fingers crooking downwards to caress the device lovingly. Kaede had quickly tired of Matsumoto's pleading once she had begun her purification ritual-the symphony of screams a woman produced when in a state of torment were far more pleasing to the ear-consequently inciting her to cut out the offending jabbering muscle to cease the infernal prattle. However, after sealing the ensuing wound with the sanitising heat of searing hot iron, the inconsiderate man had then taken to whining and snivelling like a little boy, further bothering Kaede. So, she decided to close the vexing orifice permanently. A sharp needle and strong fishing line had a million uses.

Kaede's hands resumed their meander above the tray, leaving the prod and moving on to other implements of torture. Electricity was an efficient means to inflict varying degrees of pain upon a subject without dealing permanent damage to her or his body. Yet the white-haired woman had learnt through great practice that males had a superior natural resistance to the agony of an electrical charge ravaging their muscles than females did, so nowadays she tended to reserve that particular form of anguish for those of the feminine allegiance. Most women could be cowed into doing almost anything to avoid electricity's sharp sting… much to Kaede's delight.

Kaede's eyes drifted away from her beloved instruments to take in her errant 'bodyguard'; her trademark perpetual, faint, and distant smile glued to her features. Matsumoto hung naked from the ceiling by two lengths of chain; his wrists in manacles and his arms stretched painfully taut into the air, the weak muscles of the limbs visibly straining pitifully against their treatment. Equally restrained were the man's legs, held fast by cuffed ankles affixed to a third and fourth set of chains bolted firmly to rings embedded in the grey slate tiled floor. The subject's bonds were pulled so tightly that he could barely squirm a centimetre. As they should be. Kaede couldn't have Matsumoto fidgeting while she was trying to save his soul, after all. It would be irritating to say the least.

The trim young woman, dressed plainly in a grey tank top and shorts-her nightwear-turned fully to face Matsumoto and placed her hands on her hips, striking a thoughtful pose. She looked over the subject's body with an evaluating gaze, gauging how much more his shell could withstand. The man's hands were simply twin balls of meat, the digits that had once adorned them having been severed by one manner or another, leaving behind in their place a mess of cauterised flesh where Kaede had touched them with a glowing poker retrieved from the fireplace. Lower, old dried scabs and freshly torn tissue revealing raw red beneath, where the rough edges of his metal shackles had harshly cut into his skin, ringed Matsumoto's wrists. The man had struggled mightily in his restraints in the beginning, depleting much of his strength and with only severely chafed wrists-and ankles also-to show for his ultimately wasted labours. No longer did he fight, however. Matsumoto's shell had now dedicated its faculties totally towards merely sustaining its bare minimum of functions that were vital for survival.

Kaede's veiled eyes descended to the subject's neck, where yet more blood encrusted bands disfigured his flesh, along with a spattering of dark purple bruises. At several points in previous sessions, the woman had throttled Matsumoto with an assortment of objects-rope, wire, cloth; and several times with her bare hands. But under stringent circumstances, of course. Controlled asphyxiation could cause a substantial amount of burning woe to the sufferer's lungs, and in turn their whole body in general, but it had to be strictly regulated. Too much invariably resulted in premature death-one had to monitor the subject most carefully to prolong the torturous yet liberating experience. Why, once Kaede had kept one subject with a tight noose around her neck alive for more than an hour and a half by lowering her back to her tiptoes for twenty minutes or so whenever it seemed that she was drawing close to the point of no return. When the blessed woman had finally expired, she had dangled in the air by her neck for at least a full hour all together. Kaede was sure that particular subject had reached glorious enlightenment at the end.

Kaede's thoughts returned from the past to her latest subject, her gaze roaming over his ripped and bludgeoned form. Matsumoto's left leg was bent at an odd angle, the knee joint having been crushed to a pulp when she'd had the sudden impulse to deliver a blow with a small mallet to it. The man had howled terribly at that, the scream made all the more grotesque since he had lacked a tongue at the time. It was one of the things that had provoked Kaede into stitching up his lips a short period later. Really, a feminine shriek was infinitely more beautiful than a masculine one.

Kaede's smile widened just a tad once her eyes found their way to Matsumoto's bloody crotch. She wouldn't be surprised if he could hit the high notes now, however, despite being a man. A male's spirit was prone to shatter quicker when ruthlessly robbed of his manhood, a supposition that Kaede more often than not proved to ring true with all of her male subjects. The poor fools were reduced to whimpering, compliant children after such a… demoralising… dismemberment.

"What to do, what to do," Kaede remarked in a singsong voice, tapping a whimsical finger on her chin. Her gaze went to Matsumoto's more or less unharmed face; the only really noticeable damage his somewhat swollen mouth. "Ah, yes, I remember," the lissom woman said, as if it had suddenly dawned on her. In truth, she'd had a motive for abstaining from inflicting harm to Matsumoto's visage, a motive she intended to come to fruition. Right now.

Kaede turned back to her tray, plucking a pile of about a dozen, ten centimetre long, flexible needles from the selection of apparatus available. Her all but unwavering smile still on her face, she returned her attention to Matsumoto, who quivered as best he could in his chains at the sight of the needles in her hand. There were benefits to letting a subject keep their eyes, the woman reflected.

Kaede took a single step forwards to the subject, her heart rate quickening as the sweet and exciting sense of anticipation enveloped her. Taking short, rapid breaths, she pulled one needle out of the bundle, flourishing it before Matsumoto's terror-stricken eyes. The man thrashed against his bonds with renewed vigour, although amid the combination of his ailing strength and virtually unyielding restraints, it didn't make much more than the most marginal of differences.

"Now, now; none of that," Kaede chided as she replaced the heap of needles back on the tray before grasping a clump of Matsumoto's short brown hair in her now free hand, holding his head in place as he moaned weakly. "Be good and stay still…" she cooed soothingly while she brought the sharp thin needle in her other hand up to the subject's eyes, "that's it…."

Apparently comprehending what she intended to do, Matsumoto squeezed his eyes shut tightly in a meagre attempt to thwart the inescapable-his shell still had a little kick left in it after all. But Kaede would have none of it. Shifting the hand behind Matsumoto's head a fraction, she forcibly pried open his right eyelid with her thumb, exposing the frantic orb underneath. The man's eye darted wildly around the room for a few seconds, but then focused unswervingly on the shiny silver needle brandished in Kaede's right hand as it grew larger and larger in his vision, its dreaded course glaringly clear.

"There are numerous pain receptors behind the eyes," Kaede explained absently as pulled Matsumoto's eyelid back further. "Unfortunately, these can only be reached by inserting a fine needle under the top eyelid." She paused in both speech and motion, and one corner of her lips twitched slightly as her smile took on an almost impish quality. "But luckily for you, I happen to have a few of said needles."

Without any more delay, Kaede inserted the flexible needle in the exact spot she had just mentioned, lodging it deeply into Matsumoto's eye socket, nestling it just above his optic nerve. She then quickly let it go, the springy metal bouncing back and forth.

Matsumoto's stifled, yet still piercing scream echoed around the room as he jerked spasmodically, the pain consuming him… and hence, curing his soul of more of its taint. Simply magnificent.

The grand double door entrance to the room to Kaede's rear creaked open, accompanied by the click of high heels on slate. The clicks stopped shortly afterwards, and a longsuffering sigh followed while a second creak signalled the doors were being shut.

"I see I'll most likely have to get someone in to clean this floor again," a woman's smoky voice commented resignedly.

Kaede spared a glance over her shoulder from her work at the newcomer, although she already knew who was standing there behind her. Garbed in a crisp black dress suit and a cream coloured silk shirt, Dominique D'Aubigne painted a very cultured picture. But even if clad in rags the woman would still make for a fine depiction of sophistication. Standing a dash below six foot and with long, straight, glossy black locks that fell to the peak of her thighs, Dominique was an imposing person to say the least. Her distinctly feminine figure was trim but full in all the right places, as befitting to most westerners, and her features were delicate yet defined with high cheekbones and a slender nose, where on the latter a pair of stylish oval glasses was perched, emerald green eyes shining behind them. She was, to put it simply, quite stunning. Dominique was approaching middle age, creeping into her forties at the very least, but barely a wrinkle could be seen tarnishing her milky white skin. There was, however, a streak of silvery grey in her dark tresses hanging next to the left side of her face. But rather than detract from her beauty, it instead enhanced it.

Dominique had been in the Ishinomori family's employ for as long as Kaede could remember, ever since she was a young child. She had acted as Kaede's mother's personal assistant, and had also been the late woman's close confidant for many years. These days, with her mother's passing, Dominique had adopted her former role with Kaede, becoming her assistant and advisor. But, in some ways, she was more than that. The French woman had always been there for Kaede-she was like her guardian. Her friend. In short, Dominique D'Aubigne was one of the few people Kaede genuinely trusted. And considering that the sensuous lady was born and bred Soldats stock, that was certainly saying something.

"It's getting on in hours, my Lady Kaede," Dominique crooned, pointedly paying no attention to the high-pitched screeches emanating from Matsumoto as Kaede had the first needle's companions join it in protruding from his eye socket, methodically spacing the instruments of torture along its upper half. "I'm sure your… 'toys'… are keeping your bed warm for you… perhaps you should grace them with your presence."

"Any news from Big Brother?" Kaede asked as she slid another needle above the subject's eyeball, ignoring her advisor's subtle suggestion.

There was a slight silence from Dominique, so brief that it was hardly apparent, before she answered. "None, my Lady," the woman said, "but rest assured I will inform you right away as soon as I hear word from him."

Kaede nodded and shifted her ministrations to Matsumoto's other eye, leaving behind a semi-circle of spines jutting out of the man's right eye socket. He didn't howl any longer and barely convulsed as his white-haired redeemer wedged a needle over the top his left, unseeing eye; its depths void of awareness. The subject was close.

"And what of local developments?" Kaede inquired.

"Much the same, my dear," Dominique reported in a somewhat wearisome tone. "The Sumiyoshi-kai remain in disarray, with no subsidiary group having successfully claimed leadership of the clan just yet-and no clear likelihood that one ever will in the foreseeable future. I doubt they will offer much resistance-they are too busy fighting amongst themselves-although with the threat of our organisation, it may serve to unite them. But there is nothing we can do about that. Regardless, I foresee an easy victory over them." Dominique took a moment to clear her throat, and then resumed. "Talks continue with the proxy leaders of the Yamaguchi-gumi, with little progress. They believe us to be merely another organised crime syndicate, and as such are treating us as one attempting to ally with them. It may cause problems when they learn the truth. But for now, we are on good terms. The Kansai region is becoming unprofitable for them; a new collaborator would inject much-needed funds and life into the ailing yakuza clan. I hear they have been trying to expand into the Kanto region in search of new business, which will sooner or later instigate a war with the Sumiyoshi-kai, united or divided. I recommend having some of our eyes-and-ears keep a watch on their progress throughout the territory. This situation can perhaps be exploited to our advantage."

"Mmm," Kaede mumbled idly in agreement, more interested in saving Matsumoto's soul than the cold war with the country's underworld at present.

"The other yakuza clans that haven't already been devoured will be consumed once all of the gangs under the Sumiyoshi-kai and the Yamaguchi-gumi are inducted into our ranks or dissolved; it's only a matter of time," Dominique went on, before hesitating, as if something offensive had caught in her throat. "As for… *them*, their loathsome presence has been all but purged from the major cities in the Kanagawa prefecture save for their persisting entrenchments in Kawasaki. However, their agents still somehow find the means to strike against us on our own grounds, even here in Yokohama. Loses have been… tolerable, but the disturbances discredit us with our 'partners', both current and… impending."

"Soldats…" Kaede whispered softly, and then abruptly jammed another needle rather violently into Matsumoto's left eye socket. Her aim was slightly off however, and the sharp point pierced the white of the man's eye, passing straight through the glutenous inside of the orb before bursting into the skull's cavity. Matsumoto didn't so much as flinch.

"Child, I believe that man's senses have become numb," Dominique interjected into Kaede's session. "You *have* been 'attending' to him for in excess of a week now."

Kaede ceased planting needles in Matsumoto's eye sockets and looked at him closely. He sagged heavily in his chains and his breathing was hoarse and shallow. "Yes…" the white-haired young woman hissed in approval, her tone taking on an impassioned timbre, "he has grown beyond this plane of reality, beyond this stunted level of thought to another place, far removed from all mundane things. He has fully accepted the pain into his shell, into his mind and his very spirit, and thus it has bestowed upon him divine understanding of his true existence." Kaede sighed in joyous wonder. "He has been favoured with enlightenment!"

"…Of course, my lady," Dominique said quietly.

Quickly, Kaede unlocked Matsumoto's-or more accurately, the trappings that contained the man's soon-to-be ascending soul-shackles and carefully lowered him to the floor, where a black body bag awaited. Arranging the subject in its snug confines, she then zipped up the bag to about three-quarters of the way, insuring that the fading shell could still feed on its last vestiges of needed oxygen.

"Why don't you put him out of his misery?" Dominique queried as she stood beside Kaede's kneeling form, folding her arms and looking distastefully down at Matsumoto's shell. "Traitorous male," she sneered, her words laced with heavy scorn.

"It can't die yet," Kaede informed her aide, stroking the rubbery material of the body bag with one hand, drawing circular patterns as she watched the shell's face, the tops of his eyes still riddled with a curved line of needles. Removing them might drag Matsumoto back from the brink-it was a chance Kaede was not willing to take. "This state must be prolonged. I am not so cruel as to deny Matsumoto's soul the scant handful of moments to bathe in its newfound understanding before it rises to the Heavens. He was a betrayer, but he has been redeemed; the defilement in him has been banished. I am confident he has repented for his sins."

"They are *all* full of defilement, Lady Kaede," Dominique remarked disdainfully, her beautiful features twisting as she continued to look down upon Matsumoto's shell. "And there is no redeeming them. The sooner you learn that, the better."

Kaede looked up at Dominique, tilting her head slightly to one side. "'All'?" she parroted, before shaking her head, her lower lip pouting out a little, making her seem like a argumentative child. She still smiled however, causing the expression to appear rather odd as well. "No, no; Big Brother is not tainted."

Dominique let out a low, throaty chuckle, smiling tolerantly down at Kaede. She reached down and indulgently brushed the young woman's pale cheek with the fingertips of one hand. "Poor, naïve darling," she whispered sympathetically, before straightening. "Come along now," she then said in a louder and sterner voice, "I will have someone fetch Matsumoto's 'shell' later. You really must retire to bed."

Kaede nodded obediently, and then rose to her feet, joining her advisor as the statuesque woman led the way out of the room. Big Brother. She prayed he was all right. He had been gone for so long. But his assignment was necessary, or so Dominique said. It was a mission that would ultimately help them in combating Soldats. And when it came to Soldats, Kaede would do everything in her power to bring the corrupt society down. There was no repentance for them.

* * *

"Cold night," Mireille remarked offhandedly, glad that she had worn her coat for their latest outing into the city's underbelly… as pointless as it had been. Her breath fogged the air ahead of her as she walked down the shadowy and empty Paris streets together with Kirika, a testament that winter was just around the corner. Soon Mireille wouldn't be able to wear miniskirts any more, unless she was willing to brave the coming chill.

Mireille's eyes turned to look upon Kirika, but the girl merely mumbled a vague agreement and inclined her head a fraction, her eyes remaining fastened to the footpath she was travelling along.

Mireille sighed, a plumb of mist blooming in front of her face; a larger one this time. It had been days since they had put the word out that they were searching for Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu-or to be more precise, 'Noir'-but so far not a single snitch nor information dealer had unearthed anything noteworthy. Not even Simon, with his supposed network of spies, had been able to learn of anything. The boy had apologised profusely to Mireille for his failure to date, but his worthless regrets did nothing to bring her and Kirika any closer to their enemies. This drought of data concerning the false Noir did nothing to quell the unpleasant distance between Mireille and her partner. Wherever Ryosuke and Vincent were hiding, they were adept at concealing themselves.

It was very late into the evening, Mireille and Kirika having been out and about in the city since early morning, paying each of the blonde's sources a visit to obtain an update on their progress. Needless to say, the pair's efforts had been for naught. Each day that passed was marked with a gradually heightening sense of frustration to Mireille-that, and a sense of desolation, hopelessness. The passing days not only signified the skill Ryosuke and Vincent possessed at laying low-and the apparent lack of skill Mireille's informants had at sniffing them out-but also the increasing breakdown in the blonde woman's relationship with her diminutive counterpart. Whenever the sun rose on the horizon for a new day, Kirika's spirits seemed to conversely diminish just a little bit more. It had come to a point that the darkhaired girl's mood had degenerated to such a degree that it appeared she had closed herself off completely from Mireille and the outside world alike. She was scarcely responsive to verbal inquiries and seemed to look right through her surroundings most of the time, immersed in her private brooding. She didn't eat much anymore, either, making mealtimes a considerably short and cheerless affair, but coupled with the oppressive silence now commonplace between the two assassins, they were still uncomfortable and depressing despite their length. The apartment Mireille and Kirika were returning to at this very moment; their sanctuary, their *home*; no longer contained the pleasant and content atmosphere it once had. Rather, it was a cold and unfeeling place filled with old memories of a better life the two had formerly shared; a life that Mireille felt she had lived a long, long time ago. She wondered if that life had ever been real to begin with.

It couldn't go on like this. But Mireille could do nothing save for hunting down the false Noir, doing Breffort's bidding for both their sakes, and hope that everything would turn out all right in the end. What else was there? It was the only thing she was sure of, the only thing that could improve matters between her and Kirika. She just wished developments would proceed faster. For some reason time had become Mireille's third bitter foe. No, that was a lie. She knew the reason behind the sentiment. Mireille felt like as time went by another piece of Kirika's heart slipped away from her. When that feeling had hit the woman, it had… it had simply frightened her. And shocked her that she was so frightened. She knew she was attached to her partner… loved her… but still, a part of her had never truly believed, or perhaps accepted, that Kirika meant *that* much to her. Kirika. That girl. She always served to get under Mireille's skin somehow. Even so, the Corsican would rather have a moody partner she didn't quite comprehend her feelings for than none at all. She couldn't go back to always being alone.

A Metro subway entrance drew nearer on Mireille and Kirika's left as they walked, bright light still shining from its depths even at this hour. There were only a few more blocks to trek before the apartment would be in sight. With this chilly night air, Mireille was beginning to rethink her decision to walk the distance rather than take a taxicab, or even the Metro. She angled her gaze slightly to Kirika, speculating whether or not the girl felt the cold. Mireille smiled faintly without humour. The cold probably didn't even touch Kirika. A lack of awareness tended to allow one to distance themselves from petty annoyances, environmental and otherwise.

All of a sudden, Kirika stopped walking and looked over her shoulder, prompting Mireille to do likewise. A brown Citroen was cruising quietly up the street behind them. While that was nothing unusually in itself, one thing did cause the Corsican pause-its headlights were switched off.

Doubtless having realised he had been spotted, the driver of the car suddenly accelerated, speeding along the remaining length of road towards the stationary Mireille and Kirika, closing the distance separating them at an alarming rate.

"Kirika!" Mireille exclaimed, looking her counterpart in the eyes briefly before snapping her gaze to the Metro entrance, and then back again to the girl.

Understanding her partner's intentions, Kirika took off for the subway, pulling out her handgun at the same time. Mireille risked a fleeting look at the rapidly gaining car, and then bolted after Kirika, hot on the girl's heels. She heard the Citroen squeak to an abrupt halt next to the curb and its four doors open a second later, followed by men's vehement curses. Reaching inside her coat, Mireille drew her Walther P99 from its holster strapped around her torso and angled her upper body back around to the car as she continued to run. She sighted five men in total clambering out of the Citroen, all bearing arms. With her gun held in her right hand, Mireille unleashed a volley of bullets in the mob's general direction, hoping to delay their imminent pursuit for a few seconds as they scrambled for cover and give her and Kirika more time to find a defensive position. Fighting out in the open when her opponents had their vehicle to hide behind was not the Corsican assassin's style.

A couple of bullets smashed through the car's front windshield, forming a spider's web of cracks spiralling out from the puncture holes, and consequently caused the driver to duck and throw himself out of the vehicle to prevent being hit. Several more rounds perforated the hood of the Citroen, and more its open doors which the majority of the men used to protect themselves from Mireille's inhibiting barrage. Another slug shattered the front passenger side window to pieces, and a second luckier shot struck a man trying to exit the car there in the right upper arm, the force of the gunshot knocking him back into his seat.

"Go! Go!" the injured man shouted through clenched teeth, urging his companions on with emphatic motions with his head while he clutched at his bleeding arm. "Take the shotgun!"

Mireille didn't stick around for the rest of the conversation, sprinting down the subway's flight of stairs two steps at a time as the men returned fire, bullets ricocheting off the walls she had only instants before run past. She saw Kirika disappear behind the corner at the end of the staircase and quickly dashed after her, leaping the remaining half a dozen steps to the landing, the sound of her boots hitting the hard cement floor echoing off the narrow subway entryway's walls.

Mireille darted around the corner just as a hail of gunfire rung out, a myriad of bullets riddling a payphone mounted on the wall across from the street entrance to the Metro system. The unfortunate payphone spewed out coins all over the landing from its ruptured insides, as though a gushing, metallic wound. Better it than her, however, Mireille thought grimly.

Mireille glanced at Kirika beside her as Euro coins bounced past their feet and down the second staircase into the Metro station. She looked rather anxious as she met the Corsican's eyes, one of the first true displays of emotion the blonde had seen for quite a while. Not surprising though, considering that they had just been attacked out of the blue. Who were these men? Or more importantly, how on earth had they found them? Mireille Bouquet and Kirika Yuumura were not easy people to track down-Kirika didn't even exist in many public and private records.

Mireille pressed her back against the cracked, graffiti stained cement wall and carefully peeked around the corner. Whoever these would-be assassins were, she was sure they weren't Soldats minions. For one thing, they had a substantially different dress sense than the soldiers of the clandestine group. These men had the trappings of showy gangsters, not the black suits and ties that were customary among Soldats operatives. Were they with Ryosuke and Vincent? It was unlikely, taking into account that the two Asian men were reportedly strangers to this country; Mireille didn't think they would have any notable contacts in Paris. It didn't rule out the possibility that they could have recruited some flunkies, however. Had one of Mireille's informants sold her out to the false Noir? Maybe… but the blonde had always been careful not to reveal too much about herself to her sources, business associates or not. It was a good way to wind up dead before you even knew what-and who-hit you.

A few rounds impacted into the wall close to Mireille's peeping face, causing her to reflexively jerk back into cover. In any case, her questions would have to wait until another, more appropriate time to be answered. But heads would roll as soon as she found out who had betrayed her.

Mireille strafed out a pace from behind the corner in a flash of movement, just as three of the men were advancing down the stairs, pistols in hand. Her expression cold, she rapidly squeezed off a trio of shots at the nearest gangster, all three of them surprised by her deft manoeuvre. Two of the Parabellum rounds made devastating contact with the targeted man's right thigh, buckling the whole leg underneath him and sending him sprawling face first on the steps, his gun escaping his grasp with the jolt of the fall. He cried out in pain and raised his head from the stairs, only to get another slug in the forehead, the bullet tearing clean through his skull and out the opposite side, an explosion of blood and brain matter punctuating its violent exit. The gangster's head slumped forwards against the steps once again, except this time lifelessly and encircled by dripping red cascading languidly down the stairs.

"Shit! What in the hell? You bitch!" screamed one goon furiously before he started blazing away wildly at Mireille with his gun, obviously taken aback by his nearby companion's abrupt death. But all he hit was cement, the assassin already having retreated into the safety of the corner once more.

Mireille listened patiently for the telltale click of an emptied handgun, waiting for the gangster to foolishly waste all of his ammunition in his rage. No, these men were definitely not Soldats. Soldats people would have had more discipline. Or at the very least, more common sense.

Mireille heard the slide of the infuriated gangster's pistol snap back, and instantly she flitted out from shelter, brandishing her Walther in both hands. Her blue eyes suddenly widened as she was greeted by the alarming sight of the single barrel of a pump action shotgun aimed directly at her chest from behind the angry goon and his more composed friend, wielded by a third man who had arrived on the scene.

Mireille didn't even have the opportunity to curse before a peppering of pellets were fired her way, forcing her to desperately dive for cover, narrowly evading the lethal buckshot. Without her finely honed reflexes she would have taken the contents of the shotgun shell full in the chest, unquestionably spelling death. And Mireille would be damned if some low-level hoods claimed her life.

Another shotgun blast pounded into the wall Mireille and Kirika were just around the corner from; bits of cement raining down to the floor while puffs of dust were launched into the air. Perhaps it was time to find a better position.

Mireille signalled sharply to Kirika to run deeper into the Metro station with a terse flick of her head, her blonde locks waving. The girl immediately obeyed and the pair hurried down the second flight of stairs into the Metro, the steps of their chasing adversaries reverberating in the L-shaped entryway to their rear.

However, as soon as Mireille and Kirika entered the subway station proper, the blonde realised her mistake. A huge, thick iron barred gate was situated in front of the turnstiles to the station platform, flush with the walls, floor and ceiling of the entry area, effectively blocking any potential escape route. Stupid. Mireille should have remembered that the Metro was out of service for the night.

A loud pinging resounded in the station and a flare of sparks manifested on one bar of the gate just to the side of Mireille's head as a wayward bullet from the tailing gangsters missed its blonde target, spurring the woman to roll behind a nearby column support. Mireille flicked her head to the left, catching sight of Kirika swooping into the shelter of a pillar also, the structure thankfully just wide enough to shield a lean person. Terrific. Now the only means for Mireille and Kirika to shake these people off was to make sure that they would never bother anybody else ever again.

The blonde assassin sighed as yet another torrent of bullets were sent her and her partner's way, glancing off the upright iron bars of the gate and hammering into the reverse face of the pillar. She so disliked leaving bodies haphazardly around the place, especially in her own neighbourhood. It could be a messy business. One corpse was bad enough as it was. And the worst of it was Mireille and Kirika weren't even being paid to put them in their graves! Although, it could be said that the reward for executing these men was that she and Kirika continued breathing. And really, what better payment-or incentive for success-was that? Combating Soldats had taught Mireille that particular truth.

Mireille fired the little rounds remaining in her pistol over her shoulder at the goons, the shots mainly to force them onto the defensive and take the pressure off her and Kirika for a few seconds, rather than to actually kill any of them. The echo of gunfire faded from the station as the men fell back into cover, likely positioning themselves in the same manner Mireille and her partner did behind the station's support columns. They were on even terms now… aside from one detail-none of the gangsters had been the original Noir, the Eternal Darkness. They were but lambs in the company of lions.

Mireille ejected her depleted clip and retrieved a fresh one from the leather pouches inside her brownish-grey coat, reloading her Walther P99 and chambering the first bullet. Bringing up her gun with both hands, she took a deep breath, and then released it slowly. Her eyes moved to Kirika-the brooding girl was in much the same stance as her. Kirika's eyes were closed however, reminiscent of the time when they had faced Ryosuke and Vincent in Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental. This was no occasion to be spent gazing at Kirika while trying to decipher what was going through her mind, however, despite whether Mireille wished to or not.

Bounding out from the pillar, Mireille quickly noted the new locations of the enemy in a blink of an eye, and glimpsed a limb sticking out from behind one of the columns to the far left. Seeing an opportunity, she fired a slug at exposed the arm, and was rewarded with an agonised howl. The gangster she had struck stumbled out from the protection of the pillar, tripping over his own feet and landing on his backside. However, before Mireille could finish him off, a bullet slammed into the concrete surface of the support adjacent to her, shot by a goon from another support to the right. To her dislike, she was forced to return to the security of her cover and consequently abandon the chance to kill a second member of the gangsters' group.

Mireille looked to Kirika, and was pleased to see the girl move to take advantage of her 'offering'. The introverted girl stepped calmly out from her own pillar she was using as shelter with her Beretta M1934 held steadily in her two dainty hands, the firearm pointing at the vulnerable man still sitting on the floor out in the open, his mind in a miasma of pain from his wound.

But she didn't fire. An icy claw suddenly gripped Mireille's heart, its talons biting harshly into it. Kirika simply stood there, frozen, her gun raised and aimed at the injured gangster, but her features slack and her eyes staring vacantly into space. The girl's frail body was completely exposed, and apparently she was oblivious to that fact too. What was wrong with her? Why didn't she shoot?

Mireille took an unconscious concerned step forward towards her stock-still partner, her free hand lifting to reach out to her. "Kiri-ah!" the beginnings of the woman's frantic call was viciously cut off as a shotgun shell smacked into the solid side of the column beside her and bounced off at an angle, several of the pellets grazing her face.

Mireille staggered backwards into cover again, clasping a hand over the stinging abrasions scoring her left cheek. But the minor flesh wounds that could have easily been a ruined mess of half-flayed features were the farthest things from her mind. Her gaze automatically went back to Kirika, her breathing and heart rate quickening substantially more than it had done so all throughout the gunfight. Kirika's hands-no, her entire arms-were shaking. Trembling uncontrollably. The Beretta in her grasp shuddered, and Mireille thought she could hear the full magazine it contained rattling.

"Kirika!" Mireille desperately cried, praying her voice would snap her partner out of whatever state of petrification she was in. Her eyes moved to fleetingly survey the gangsters, and to her horror, she saw that the man on the floor had recovered his senses and was bringing his pistol to bear at Kirika with his good arm, a mildly startled but relieved smirk on his face.

The goon armed with the shotgun grinned too a couple of feet from his friend, keeping his weapon on Mireille's position, ensuring that she wouldn't interfere unless she wanted to eat a lethal meal of buckshot. At this range coupled with his readiness he wouldn't miss if the Corsican stepped out into the open, and she was likely to lose a limb to the powerful blast even if he failed to score a hit on her torso. Either way, it would mean death.

Not that Mireille cared. Her feet rasped on the concrete floor as she prepared to leap out of cover and kill the pistol-wielding gangster before he shot Kirika, regardless if it would mean she would likely die in the process. In her frenetic state of mind it didn't even register what she was willing to do for her partner.

"Dumbass kid…" the goon on the floor sneered, cocking the hammer of his revolver as he lined up the immobile, shivering Kirika in its sights. His finger tensed on the trigger.

"KIRIKA!"

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

This chapter was a little shorter than usual, but I wanted to split it into two parts (the reason should be obvious ^_^).

Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi are the two biggest yakuza syndicates in Japan if anybody didn't already realise.


	8. Sinners, Act II

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The eighth chapter. Cue track sixteen of Noir OST 2: Killing. ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 8 - Sinners, Act II

Kirika heard a pain-filled yelp a split second after the latest bang of Mireille's gun, and next the telltale brusque scuff of rubber shoe soles on concrete followed by a low grunt and a dull thud, signalling to the astute girl that one of the men belonging to the group who had attacked her and her partner had been shot and subsequently stumbled out into the open. With this advantageous opportunity presenting itself, Kirika's heightened reflexes that had been rigorously honed to absolute perfection over the years instantly took effect, causing her body to respond without thought. She bounded nimbly out from behind the protection of the pillar she was using as cover, bringing her Beretta to bear on the gangster sitting on the floor a short distance away from her, for all intents and purposes an easy target.

An easy target… no… not to Kirika. A living being had never been an easy target for her, not ever since she had awakened that fateful day with no recollection of her life before that moment, her memories totally erased except for one, significant word. And after returning from the Manor, after learning of the existence of her other self, even less so. Indeed, she had hoped to escape from taking another life ever again… but it was a naïve hope. There was no escape. Her time was up, now. It was kill or be killed, do or die; there were no more reprieves, no chance to sidestep what the girl was now beginning to realise was inevitable. No. She still had her will; she still had a choice. The darkness did not rule her, not yet.

Kirika suddenly froze, her muscles locking, petrifying her in a ready stance with her pistol raised in both hands, the vulnerable man seated on the floor securely in its sights. The view of the Metro station blurred and then melted away from the darkhaired girl's vision, and all sounds faded to barely audible muffles, her mind focusing elsewhere-inwards, where a more important battle than the one against the group of men was being waged.

It was her choice to make-her *own* choice. If Kirika killed now, there would be no turning back. She would do it again and again as it became easier and easier, a never-ending spiral into sin. A descent further and further into darkness, ultimately ending with the darkness itself, in its pure, undiluted form.

But she *could* resist. She didn't have to become a murderer again. She still had her own will. Nothing and no one controlled her. Kirika was free; her life was her own to live. Soldats, Altena-she was not their puppet, not any more. She didn't have to take the third-and significant-step towards the darkness, and towards her other, malevolent self that it harboured in its bleak shadows. Right now, at this very moment, she could stop the journey. All she had to do was try.

"KIRIKA!"

The desperate shout of a female voice Kirika knew even better than her own wrenched her mind violently back to reality, easily demolishing the dampening barrier the girl had placed around it and her senses. Her head snapped to the source of the yell at the same time her brown eyes reregistered her surroundings in their depths, and was met by the sight of a breathless Mireille's unnerved face, the blonde's own normally icy blue eyes imploring. Mireille's posture was also taut and she looked primed, coiled to spring. But her partner's edgy stance was not what drew Kirika's attention. Her face. It was the woman's face she focused on. Mireille's left cheek had three roughly straight lines scrawled across it. Three *red* lines.

As Kirika watched, a trickle of blood seeped out of the lower of the scars, the drip sketching a ruby trail down Mireille's cheek before pausing at the bottom of her chin for an instant. It then dropped slowly towards the floor, as though the air it fell through was made of gooey syrup. Blood. Mireille was bleeding. She had been hurt. Kirika's partner had been hurt because Kirika herself had failed to support her. Kirika's hesitation had resulted in Mireille being hurt. The woman Kirika loved had been hurt because of her!

Something crumbled inside of Kirika, something important, but the awareness that something had was vague to her, merely a distant rumble in the far reaches of her mind, if it could even be called that. It was eclipsed by another sensation, a heavy, leaden lurch of something thrusting forwards to fill a sudden gap inside her with sluggish yet resolute force, like crude oil jetting out of an unobstructed pipe into clear water. The lunging sensation gripped Kirika's static body, and for an instant the farthest outskirts of her vision seemed to pulse a soulless black.

The droplet of Mireille's blood hit the floor, its landing punctuated by the crack of a 9mm calibre bullet discharging from the firing chamber of a Beretta M1934 Commercial echoing around the station. The slug tore mercilessly into the right eye of the confidently smirking man sitting on the floor, tossing his head back. The revolver he was pointing at Kirika went off as his body jerked with the impact of the bullet brutally invading his skull, his finger squeezing the trigger mechanically. But his aim was ruined with the jolt, and the .38 round whizzed harmlessly by the stationary girl's head, sending several of her dark locks flapping with its passing before it slammed into the wall behind her. Kirika didn't flinch even a millimetre.

The stricken man toppled sideways, his smug smile frozen permanently on his features and one eye gone, now just a flood of burgundy fluid remaining that dribbled out of the empty socket and down his face in a thick rivulet as he collapsed.

The other man armed with a twelve-gauge pump action shotgun swung his weapon in Kirika's direction at his companion's unexpected demise, but the assassin was already moving, rushing straight at him at a breakneck velocity, almost already upon him in the heartbeat between her gunshot and his turn.

The gangster's face displayed his panic and his actions manifested it as he fired a shell recklessly at Kirika, but all the spray of buckshot hit was the section of floor a couple of metres behind where she had once been, the agile girl having bounded diagonally into the air to her right, where a support column stood, to evade the blast. Kirika automatically bent her knees as her feet touched the pillar, appearing to suspend in the air for a fraction of a second, attached to the column, and then propelled herself off it in an anti-clockwise spin, lashing out with her right leg at her opponent's weapon. Her foot struck the barrel of the hoodlum's shotgun, knocking it forcefully aside with the power of her short leap behind her kick, effectively rendering it useless against her and leaving the man exposed for further attack.

Kirika crouched as she hit the floor and went with the momentum of her initial spin, whirling around one hundred and eighty degrees before rising to her full height at the climax of her twirl, jabbing viciously upwards with her left elbow into her taller foe's throat, crushing his larynx as if it were a cardboard tube. The man let out the gurgle of someone slowly beginning to suffocate and then dropped to his knees. His shotgun fell to the floor with a clatter, forgotten as all his attention was dedicated towards trying to breathe, his hands clutching futility at his closed-off throat.

Kirika's eyes flicked to the left and her head turned slightly in the same direction as if to look over her shoulder, where she knew her third adversary dwelled with his back to a pillar a few feet to the left of the one her first enemy had used as shelter. But at this angle it provided him with no protection. Her acute hearing picked up the sharp inhalation of someone preparing to shoot a firearm, and she instinctively rolled behind the choking man kneeling before her just as his comrade started wildly releasing blazing hot lead her way, appearing devoted to expending all of his valuable ammunition in a solitary assault.

The final two of the twelve undisciplined shots that didn't end up hitting the walls or ceiling drove an equal number of bullets deep into the torso of the kneeling gangster Kirika was employing as a human shield, sparing him from a lengthy and agonising end at the hands of asphyxiation. He keeled over face first, revealing behind him-to the horror of his companion-a stooped Kirika with her pistol wielded steadily in one hand and its barrel pointing straight at him, her expression detached-emotionless.

A single 9mm round took the shocked hoodlum in the left side of his upper chest, throwing him back against the column he had once been using as cover. "Holy…" he whispered in a croak before he slid down the pillar to land in a limp heap on the floor, the light in his eyes vanishing and his grip on his empty handgun slackening.

The tinkle of an ejected bullet casing dwindled in the background. Kirika blinked, and then suddenly it was over. It had been only a matter of seconds, but now three people were lying unmoving on the floor. Dead. Slain by her hands. Three lives snuffed out effortlessly as if they were nothing. And it had come so naturally to her. Killing always had, however. But it was different this time. Kirika had had no control over her actions; she had simply… acted. One second she had been looking at Mireille, and the next three people were dead. Her darkness… Kirika had touched it… she had *seized* it. And she had not recoiled at the foul contact.

It was quiet in the station, not even a whisper to be heard. The death cries of the condemned had ceased, the roar of the instrument of their ruin hushed. And their murderer silent-as always-and as she had been throughout their execution. It was a quiet in stark contrast to the cacophony that had filled the station's walls only a handful of seconds before. Seconds. Mere seconds and suddenly Kirika's conceptions about herself and her life had been brushed away as if the daydreams of a child. But they had been childish conceptions, in retrospect.

Kirika stood up slowly, her gun smoking and her head bowed, making an effort to keep her gaze fixed to the floor where the evidence of her sins did not pollute her vision… and remind her of her weakness. So much for free will. So much for choice. Her resistance had lasted barely all of two seconds before folding. A puppet with its strings cut was evidently still a puppet.

Kirika's eyes moved lethargically to the weapon in her hand. It felt hot from its use, and light, comfortable to handle. Like it was an extension of herself. Part of her. Maybe it was. Maybe it always had been. Weapons were the tools of an assassin's trade. And Kirika was an assassin. An efficient killer. It was what she was trained to do. What she was born to do. No escape. No peace. It was who she was. She was a sinner.

Kirika felt something that had been progressively withering for a long while inside of her go into its death throes with the harsh realisation…. Hope. Hope for a normal life, hope for freedom from her past. There was no hope for people such as her. Her hands were black with sins, corrupted. It was all they knew.

Mireille stepped cautiously out from behind the support column she had been utilising as cover in the corner of Kirika's eyesight. The woman's mouth hung slightly open as she surveyed the bloodshed her partner had wrought, her countenance crossed somewhere amid great relief, mild bewilderment and… pleasant satisfaction. She stopped a couple of metres from Kirika and looked around the area for a few more seconds, seeming at a loss for what to say.

Finally, Mireille's gaze rested on Kirika, her eyes scanning over the girl's slim body circumspectly but thoroughly, obviously searching for any injuries. "Are you alright?" she asked with an oddly cheery tone and a smile, if a minutely shaky one, on her features. "You had me worried for a minute."

Kirika simply nodded and mumbled wordlessly in the affirmative. She knew Mireille was referring to physical wounds. After all, they were the ones that really mattered. An assassin's body was her most essential aspect. Nothing else was relevant. Kirika was certain Mireille was genuinely concerned about her, but she was unsure about the motivation behind her concern. Was it out of affection for the girl she cared about; the girl she loved? Or was it purely out of 'professional' interest, to her partner in murder, merely a fellow assassin? At one time, Kirika would have been absolutely positive that it was the former, but lately… lately….

Kirika's head abruptly turned to Mireille as she suddenly remembered that the woman had been hurt earlier, the depths of her soft brown gaze anxious as all other thoughts bar her love's condition were purged from her mind. "Are *you* okay?" she inquired quickly, examining Mireille's left, bloodied, cheek with a meticulous eye.

Mireille's smile widened a bit and she reached up to touch her scarred cheek gingerly with her fingertips. "I'm fine," she said gently, dispelling Kirika's unease about her welfare a little, "I know it probably looks bad, but they're only scratches." The blonde then sighed tiredly, her smile becoming wry. "The smallest wounds always tend to bleed the most."

Mireille's pretty smile then disappeared completely from her face, her expression turning serious. "There's still one more," she said gravely. "In the car, upstairs. He could be lying in wait for us; stay alert."

Kirika nodded. Back to business. No peace.

She followed after Mireille as the blonde quietly walked past the three corpses and up the stairs of the Metro station's entry passageway, her Walther P99 held with its barrel aiming skywards in her hands, ready to serve its function to kill at a split second's notice. Kirika's own gun remained by her side, dangling loosely in her right hand while she kept her eyes focused straight ahead until she started climbing the stairs, not wanting to see her handiwork, the testament of her true existence; her purpose in this world.

Mireille paused at the bullet hole ridden corner they had taken shelter behind near the start of the shootout, peeking around it to check for any sign of danger. After a moment, she carried on her advance up towards street-level, skirting nonchalantly past the body of the man she had vanquished with ease slumped on the next set of steps, and dodging the wide section of staircase that was tarnished with puddles and streaks of red. Kirika traced her footsteps exactly.

Mireille swiftly inspected her flanks and rear as the street came into view, prudently ensuring that no one was waiting in ambush for her and Kirika. Deeming that there was no adversaries set to waylay them ahead, the blonde proceeded to stealthily traverse the last few steps of the staircase, walking onto the darkened pavement by the street, Kirika joining her an instant later.

Kirika observed that the fifth and final gangster who had apparently remained behind in the car he and his friends had shown up in was sitting askew in the front passenger seat, his legs hanging outside of the vehicle, and was clutching his right upper arm where he appeared to have been shot, if the large scarlet blot discolouring the sleeve of his jacket was any indication. Mireille must have managed to wound him during her flight into the underground Metro station.

Upon spotting Kirika and Mireille's emergence from the station's brightly lit street entrance, the man's eyes widened and, letting go of his injured arm, made to reach across his body for something inside the car-most likely a weapon.

"Don't!" Mireille called out in a no-nonsense voice, bringing up her gun sharply as she did so for added incentive while striding forwards, Kirika indolently bringing up the rear.

The goon wisely complied, slowly drawing his hand back and raising it in the air in a gesture of surrender. Kirika was glad. It meant there was little chance she would be forced to kill him… for the moment, at any rate. Although, Mireille would probably beat her to it if the situation turned violent. That would be a better outcome. Murder… the woman didn't seem to have the same problem with it as Kirika did. Certainly, she seemed at home with it. Kirika wished she could have the same aloofness. In the past, she had felt nothing when she took a life, and indeed, she still felt virtually nothing. But later she had discovered it was that very fact that caused her sorrow. And that still hadn't changed, either. Ending a life was wrong. It was a sin.

A small, marginally muted part of the Kirika wondered then if Mireille's blasé attitude towards murder was truly a quality to be admired. Nevertheless, she didn't judge her partner as a bad person because it. It was somehow okay when it came to Mireille. It was a facet that made the woman who she was, after all. The woman Kirika loved.

Of course, Mireille didn't have another persona lurking inside of her to consider. A personal darkness that thrived on violence; on slaughter. Kirika wondered how long it would be until the darkness succeeded in consuming her, now. Clearly her supposed strong, resolute willpower was merely a self-deluding illusion. If she couldn't even restrain herself from snuffing out three lives, what hope did she have at holding sway over the darkness? And with her evident willingness to kill, that darkness would now move to infect her heart and soul with its poison even more aggressively than ever before.

Mireille positioned herself a few steps in front of the yielded hoodlum, aiming her Walther unwaveringly at his head. Kirika stood behind her and just off to the right, giving herself a good view of the man and his other arm; the wounded one. It was still resting by his side and even though he had taken a bullet there, he could yet use it to secretly retrieve a weapon that would consequently be utilised against Mireille. And Kirika *had* to support Mireille. Her partner had already been injured once tonight because of her negligence. She wouldn't permit it to happen again. There was a tickling in the far recesses of Kirika's mind at her stanch promise, a whisper of something… a faint memory perhaps. But the girl ignored it. Now was not the time for reminiscence. The present was dismal enough as it was.

"Talk," Mireille demanded coldly, her blue eyes narrowing to menacing slits. "Whom do you work for? How did you find us?"

The gangster looked up defiantly at the blonde, but under her unshakable gaze he then flinched and bowed his head submissively. Kirika noticed his eyes shift discreetly to the subway entrance, however, as if seeking help from his absent friends. Little did he know they couldn't even help themselves, now. Nor would they ever have a chance to again.

"Your associates aren't coming," Mireille said pitilessly, evidently also catching his straying eyes. She visibly tightened her grip on her pistol. "I won't ask a second time," she then warned.

The gangster raised his head to look at his interrogator again and then swallowed hard, sweat beading on his brow. For a moment Kirika believed he would not answer her partner's questions despite the woman's sincere threat, but then after a number of tense seconds, and in a somewhat gruff and resentful voice, he spoke.

"Millet-I work for Millet," the man at last confessed grudgingly. "He runs out of Pigalle. Owns most of it, too. Not the classy joints, though; the sleazy ones."

"Go on," Mireille prompted, motioning with her gun a tad.

The wounded goon eyed the Walther P99 warily for a second, followed by the imposing woman who brandished it, and then after apparently weighing his chances of survival if he opted to be difficult, sensibly concluded that a lack of compliance would prove fatal. He continued. "Two guys wandered into the club he uses as his base the other day-Slick Chicks. Nice place, you'd probably get a job there fine," he said, his last comment uttered with a degree of contempt as he glowered at Mireille. This seemed to antagonise Kirika's counterpart for some reason, her trigger finger twitching pointedly. The man swallowed apprehensively once again and quickly went on. "They were Asian guys, one really up himself, the bastard." He spat out the final word, the memory of the visitor obviously leaving an objectionable aftertaste with him-Kirika could relate to that particular feeling. "They wanted two women whacked-" His eyes darted between Mireille and Kirika meaningfully, "-you two. Paid us a whole bundle as well." The goon looked back at the Metro entrance where his friends still had not come out, sneering. "Now I know why."

Kirika frowned a little. That wasn't good news. If Ryosuke and Vincent-the clear clients of Millet and his gang-were hiring others to try and assassinate her and Mireille, it would mean they would be thrown into more confrontations. And more lives would be lost in the process.

Mireille's frowned too-albeit much deeper than Kirika-no doubt reading more or less the same implications behind their captive's words. Although the darkhaired girl didn't think the amount of people they would be forced to kill as a result of the false Noir's actions even registered in her mind. Or at least, not in the same way it did in Kirika's.

"And how did you find us?" Mireille further grilled the man.

"We have people who find other people," the hoodlum said simply. But his lips then curled up into a wan and slightly tremulous smile. "I really thought Rousseau and his pals would fall short on this one, though," he revealed. "The details on you two were so scarce a lot of the guys thought it was hopeless. Strange…." The goon's brow creased in mild perplexity and his eyes took on a somewhat faraway look. But they soon refocused on his subjugator and the deadly weapon she held in his face, the here and now apparently more crucial than the past to him. "But I guess I shouldn't be surprised why there was so little information about you, now." He shook his head in bafflement mixed with some amazement, gaping at the pistol in Kirika's small hand. "Who *are* you people?"

"That's not important," Mireille said levelly. "Not to you." She took a step back from the wounded man. "Stand up and walk towards the Metro," she then ordered, gesturing with her Walther for him to rise, flicking it upwards a couple of times.

The gangster did as he was told, albeit very cautiously and quite bitterly, getting to his feet and then walking to the Metro station's entryway with a hand pressed once again to his gunshot wound, Mireille marshalling him onwards with her gun at his back. Kirika chose to remain where she was-she knew why her partner was taking him there. And she didn't think she could stomach any more death tonight.

The goon looked over his shoulder nervously once he reached the top of the flight of stairs leading down to the first landing on the passageway, no doubt seeing the gruesome carcass of one of his gunned down companions, but Mireille motioned for him to keep going, her face as frosty as winter's heart. The blonde assassin stayed at street-level as he trudged deeper into the station's entrance, and soon he disappeared from Kirika's sight. The girl looked away, then, focusing her gaze on the pavement in front of her pink shoe clad feet.

A lone gunshot suddenly rang out in the night, spelling the end for the informative gangster, his body joining the others of his gang in their subway station tomb. Kirika lifted her head and glimpsed Mireille holstering her Walther under her coat with a weary sigh. The woman then turned around and strolled calmly back to Kirika.

"We should go. It's late, but regardless we've lingered too long. Someone's bound to have heard at least one of the shots," she said sternly. Mireille then smiled quite brightly, as if moments before she hadn't just coldly executed a man without a second thought. "Besides, I'm probably a mess," she added in a much more light-hearted tone, touching her injured cheek delicately with one hand. "I want to return home and wash up."

"Mmm," Kirika responded dourly, her eyes drawn to Mireille's smile. It was resplendent on the blonde's beautiful visage-her smiles typically were when directed at Kirika-but on this occasion to the girl's eyes there was something different. If she concentrated and looked lower, beneath its stunning veneer, the smile appeared to lack warmth. It was instead… beguiling… even a little sinister. And made all the more by the blood smudged over the left side of Mireille's face. It was a smile that a lion gave to another of its kind who was affiliated with the same ferocious pride. It was one of camaraderie, one of shared calling, one offered after successfully devouring prey. To Kirika it contained no fondness save that a lion held for its hunting partner. It was not a smile that possessed the qualities of love.

The unseen wound in Kirika's chest flared up once again, radiating a deep-seeded pain beyond measure. She should have seen it sooner. It was okay, though. She was not truly the same as Mireille, after all. She was by far deeper in sin than the blonde was; Mireille was an angel compared to her, one of the celestial beings the girl had read existed up above in a place called Heaven. Moreover, if Mireille was an angel, then Kirika was the opposite-a demon from down below in the dark domain of Hell. And how could an angel love a demon? It was impossible. No, a sinner of Kirika's like was not deserving of love… not even from a 'fellow' lion.

* * *

Mireille leaned forwards and examined the trio of scars marring her cheek in the mirror belonging to the medicine cabinet affixed above the bathroom sink in the apartment. She turned her head further to the right, providing a better angle to scrutinise the scratches, and then fingered them tentatively, debating whether or not it would be worthwhile to dress them to promote quicker healing. Deciding that to apply a bandaid or three to her face would be blatantly obvious and definitely attract people's unwanted looks, the blonde emitted a displeased breath of air and picked up a tube of antiseptic cream, settling on simply treating the cuts and forgoing covering them. She squirted out a dollop of the ointment onto her fingertips and started rubbing it softly into her lesions, the cool, soothing mixture gently relieving the stinging sensation emanating from them.

After she had scrubbed away the build-up of dried blood smeared around the wounds and over her cheek, what remained hadn't looked too bad. The flying pellets that had brushed across Mireille's face courtesy of a lucky ricochet had scored only shallow grazes, merely minor tissue lacerations that she was confident would heal fast-the Corsican assassin had enough experience with all sorts of injuries to know. In the meantime, the cuts were nothing a little well-placed makeup wouldn't conceal. It wasn't the first time her features had been blemished due to the frequent rigors of her vocation. Indeed, the practice of hiding cuts and bruises with the aid of carefully selected cosmetics was a talent Mireille could label as having mastered. Still, she… *disliked* when she suffered an injury on the job, and especially if that injury was localised to her face. Being hurt was always a risk in Mireille's line of work, along with the possibility of permanent scarring on her person as a result of those hurts, and both were some things she endeavoured to avoid. Having to spend time recovering from a serious wound was irritating to say the least, and even the most trivial of injuries could pose a nuisance to a professional assassin. Visible scratches and contusions unconsciously drew people's eyes, and attention was something a contract killer did *not* like when on an assignment. And of course, there was also the pain factor to be considered. Mireille had unfortunately gotten intimate with lead and many other excruciating things several times during her life as an assassin, and it was not the most… pleasant… of experiences.

As Mireille massaged the last vestiges of the cream into her scars, deliberately taking longer than necessary, her eyes slowly drifted away from their reflection in the mirror and to the open bathroom doorway, where a clear line of sight into the bedroom was offered to her. And also a clear line of sight to Kirika.

Since returning home to the apartment, Kirika had simply stood there in the bedroom, looking forlorn with her head lowered while she gazed with distant and downcast eyes at the rug arranged on the floor; eyes that Mireille was certain did not even register its pattern. She had cast off her parka shortly after entering the room despite the apartment's radiators not having heated its interior to satisfaction yet on this cold night, the garment now lying on the couch across from the bed with the diminutive girl's Beretta M1934 resting atop it. Mireille had a good idea of what was bothering Kirika-she didn't have to be her partner to know that. The blonde wasn't blind; she had witnessed the sensitive girl's 'episode' in the Metro station during the engagement with Millet's men. And nor was she stupid. The gunfight with the gangsters had been the first occasion Kirika had shot anybody since she and Mireille had wiped out Altena's enclave at the Manor. The first occasion she had killed. It was only natural that she was suffering from some after effects of reacquainting herself with the black path. Kirika was a feeling-hearted girl, after all, unlike Mireille. It had to be difficult for her to cope with.

However, Kirika would come to terms with it, just like she had prevailed over her initial misgivings earlier tonight. Nevertheless, her behaviour had concerned Mireille a great deal, enough for the Corsican to consider some reckless courses of action… some quite uncharacteristic courses of action. But then, for a moment, the woman had thought…. Well, it was immaterial, now; there was no need to dwell on past events. Mireille and Kirika's performance tonight had essentially been acceptable, with an equally acceptable outcome.

Mireille dabbed her still visibly red and sore cuts one last time with her fingertips, and then straightened with a tired sigh. Hopefully, with the help of her treatment, by next morning they would show some improvement, even if it were just a hint of some.

After sparing a parting look in the mirror to check her scars once again, Mireille turned away from the sink and walked to the bathroom doorway. She loitered there a little uncertainly as she looked out into the bedroom, where Kirika hadn't budged even an inch from her spot on the rug; appearing as miserable as the previous instance she had observed her. The Corsican sighed a second time at the disheartening sight, but then assumed a pleasant smile on her face, ignoring the slight twinge from her left cheek.

"You did very well tonight," Mireille remarked in a soft and tender tone, seeking to lift Kirika's low spirits with some encouraging words. "I was most impressed. You…."

Mireille's voice trailed off to a whisper as a single tear leaked out of Kirika's left eye and rolled down her face, leaving behind a wet streak that glistened in the bedroom's light.

"Kirika…?" Mireille ventured hesitantly, her smile evaporating as a concerned expression took over her countenance.

A second teardrop formed in Kirika's other eye and trembled there for a second, before escaping to follow its predecessor's course, spilling down her cheek and merging with the first hanging below her chin. More tears joined them a moment later, the reticent girl's eyes brimming constantly with growing moisture, overflowing, the excess trickling paths to the bottom of her jaw where they collected, before dripping wetly to the floor. Kirika's cheeks were soon soaked with tears, but she never said a word nor even uttered a sound; she simply stood there and wept silently, the depths of her soft brown gaze containing a profound sadness, coupled with a strange manner of detachment that seemed to amplify it.

Mireille watched from the bathroom doorway, taken aback by her partner's sudden breakdown plus not to mention considerably alarmed… and furthermore unsure what exactly to do. Any kind words she offered would be hollow; merely sweet nothings, void of any real weight no matter how much the woman meant them-she had no idea what had caused Kirika to become so distressed, and thus how could she provide compelling assurances? But if that were the case, what action was she supposed to take to calm her partner? Thinking back, the only other occasion Mireille had seen Kirika in such a state was at the colosseum ruins on the Manor's estate after the darkhaired girl had been forced to kill Chloe to protect her from the knife-throwing assassin's jealous rage… although this particular time the Corsican's counterpart appeared even more distraught; whatever was upsetting her, it had to be significant. But when Kirika had wept then, Mireille, motivated by the desire to remind her partner that they had no time for the luxury of grief, and in turn prompt her to recover herself and rearm so they could take the fight to Altena, had bestowed her with a semblance of a hug, a rather discomfited one. It had seemed to placate her partner, however, despite its inelegance; perhaps the blonde should make a similar effort now. Regardless, Mireille had to do *something*-Kirika was clearly in pain, and yet the woman was just standing there looking at her as she quietly cried her heart out. Mireille wouldn't be able stomach watching her partner suffering such anguish for much longer. She *had* to act.

Stepping forwards into the bedroom, Mireille hesitantly approached Kirika, and, following a moment's indecision, tentatively placed her hands on the girl's bare shoulders. After receiving no negative response-or a positive one, either-from her partner, the blonde took another nervous step towards her, and then awkwardly began to gradually snake her arms down Kirika's back, keeping her palms flush with the exposed skin offered to her by the girl's spaghetti top.

"Mireille!" Kirika sobbed in a heartbreaking voice full of emotion, and without warning flung herself at Mireille, burrowing her face in the furrow of the woman's neck. She wrapped her thin arms tightly around the blonde's body, pressing her smaller own closely against her taller partner's.

All of Mireille's muscles stiffened at the unexpected contact, and as well in surprise at Kirika's startling reaction to her rather meagre gesture. But as she felt the warmth from the close proximity of trim girl's body permeating her own, she quickly relaxed and resumed her hug, her arms sliding down Kirika's back almost naturally, enfolding her; holding her comfortably near. The neck of Mireille's red top rapidly became drenched with her partner's teardrops, the girl's weeping seeming to escalate instead of lessening with her embrace.

A faint, rueful smile grew on Mireille's face, her blue eyes turning a little misty. She should have hugged Kirika a long time ago. She could see that the girl had required one badly. Kirika clung to the Corsican, handfuls of her top clenched in her grasp, by all accounts a drowning girl clutching desperately to her sole lifeline. And the awful thing was Mireille had been aware that this girl had been drowning. Yet she had done-no, she had *chosen* to do-absolutely nothing to help her, instead citing weak excuses to avoid acting. All this time Kirika had been suffering in silence with Mireille callously looking on, not even *attempting* to console her. At this moment, the woman felt like the lowest form of life in the world. Why had she done that? Why had she stood idly by, doing *nothing* to comfort Kirika? Fear that she would do something wrong, perhaps? Or was it just plain stubbornness, the blonde still rigid in her old ways?

No matter what the reason was, it was unacceptable that she had let it drag on for so long. Kirika had needed her, but Mireille had failed her. They were not Noir, but they were still a partnership, and one *far* beyond mere 'business'. How could Mireille have forgotten that? They were partners in love-in life. It was the prime reason Kirika had returned from the Manor with Mireille to Paris; that the blonde had neglected that fact shamed her terribly. Kirika had *needed* Mireille, and yet the Corsican had wilfully neglected the girl. She *knew* her partner was fragile; for all her strength in combat her psyche possessed only a brittle one-Mireille's consideration was crucial for Kirika's continued wellbeing.

No longer could Mireille afford to dither around and ignore Kirika's needs, or for that matter, how the introverted girl felt about her. She had taken her partner's feelings for granted, simply deriving of them without conferring anything in return. But theirs was a partnership that was supposed to be of give and take, where the two members supported each other in every way. It was time Mireille took responsibility and started properly and seriously performing her vital role in Kirika's life… as her lover, not just as her colleague.

"We're both so clumsy at this, aren't we?" Mireille whispered softly. It was true. While the blame for this mess fell squarely on the blonde's shoulders, Kirika was not without her fault. Her very personality was not very conducive to a communicative relationship. But that was no excuse; it was something Mireille had been conscious of. *She* had to take the first steps to further their relationship; the onus was on her, it all rested solely in her hands. If she wanted it to progress, then she had to be the bold one-she had always held that assertive position over Kirika, after all. Now that dominance had to be used for something else far more important than their occupation.

Mireille heard Kirika mumble something into her neck and then squeeze her tighter in her arms, apparently agreeing with the woman's comment. She sighed remorsefully. This would be the last time Kirika shed tears because of her actions… or lack thereof. Everything would be different now. Mireille would make sure of it. She would make sure that nothing like this failure would ever happen again. And besides… her heart would not allow it.

* * *

Kirika hugged Mireille tightly, cuddling into her-clinging to her-with the desperate need of the damned seeking salvation. She held onto the woman as if her life depended on it, but maybe, in a way, it did. The dull pain that had plagued her chest with its unbearable, never-ceasing ache had departed, replaced by a heady elation that purified the unseen wound and sealed it; healed it. And yet her tears wouldn't stop flowing from beneath her closed, wet eyelids, staining Mireille's clothes. Perhaps this was the wound's way of disinfecting itself. But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Because she had been wrong about Mireille. So wrong.

Mireille loved her. Kirika felt it in the blonde's embrace, and she felt it in her heart as it beat beside her own. Mireille still loved her; she had never stopped. Kirika, in her naivety, had just never realised it. She should not have doubted the woman's love, even if she was not deserving of it. Mireille really was an angel. Who but an angel could love the person who had murdered their family? Who but an angel could love the person who had delivered the greatest pain in all their life upon them? But Mireille did. She loved Kirika in spite of those ghastly truths. So who but an angel could Mireille be?

Kirika was a sinner; she accepted that reality, and had done so ever since the events in the cavern below the Manor. She was a sinner who would never achieve atonement for any of her crimes. But that was perfectly fine. She now remembered her purpose in this world, her *true* purpose-one she shouldn't have forgotten-and the memory of the oath she had silently pledged all those years ago when she only a child. Kirika *had* made a choice in the Metro station, an unconscious choice, but a choice nonetheless… just like the two she had made at the Manor-the first at the colosseum, and the second in the cavern below the estate. A choice to uphold her vow to look after Mireille, to protect her; defend her, to be her strength when she was weak, to support her when she could not. And it was a vow Kirika promised she would maintain ever more, regardless of what happened in the future. That she loved the woman she had sworn to protect was irrelevant, that the woman loved her was irrelevant. It was Kirika's purpose; her reason for living when by all rights she should have died with Altena and the woman's shattered ambitions long ago.

Odette Bouquet's last words had instilled a ray of light-of hope-inside Kirika's young heart that tragic day she carried out her first of many atrocious misdeeds, a ray that had once saved both her and Mireille's lives. And now, years later, it still shone brightly inside of her, illuminating a new source of light to battle her darkness with-Mireille, the late woman's daughter. Kirika would fight for her. And she would not falter. She would hold the darkness at bay for Mireille's sake. The girl's will *was* strong, stronger than anything when bathed in her love's radiance.

Kirika's eyes opened a crack, a blurred view of her Beretta lying on top of her parka on the couch greeting them. Her gun was an instrument of murder, but it had not yet been used to commit any sins. She had killed with it, but Kirika now realised those lives she had taken had been warranted-she had purely defended the woman she had pledged to look after. Mireille had given her that gun-a new one, a *fresh* one. Mireille had bestowed upon her a fresh start. Kirika's slate was not washed clean; indeed, it was marked with the blood of countless, but from here on out, the 'sins' she performed would be as a direct consequence of honouring her vow. Maybe they would still be sins in the eyes of God, but if that were the case, then Kirika would welcome them; she would accept them wholeheartedly.

[Embrace it….]

Yes, she would embrace being a sinner if that was the price of upholding her promise to Mireille's mother. She would soil her soul in the muck of darkness if that were what it took. But she would not succumb to it. Not with the light of Kirika's redeeming angel favouring the girl with her precious warmth, her potent illumination. No darkness could stand against its intensity.

Kirika smiled softly, a great burden fading from her shoulders. She was not deserving of Mireille's-of an angel's-affection… but she now knew that sometimes even a demon could be loved. Or maybe, Kirika considered, it was only an angel who could ever truly find it in their heart to love a demon.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

So ends the short foray into an angsty Mireille/Kirika relationship… for now, anyway. I couldn't have them at odds with each other for too long; this is not a 'get together' fic, it's a 'we already know we love each other so let's have mushy romantic scenes while the mean author throws obstacles at us and makes us shoot things' fic. ^_^ Besides, I don't want to repeat the themes of the series. And I also needed to give their relationship a kick in the right direction, and a reason for Kirika to becoming willing to kill again. ^_~

I debated whether Kirika would be aware of the existence of angels and demons and all that (when writing for her I have to make sure to curb my analogies and metaphors somewhat), but I figured in her time recovering from her gunshot wound she would have taken the time to read a little (like reading Mireille's magazines) and picked up some common knowledge (not too much though… it's more fun that way ^_^).

From now on, expect some nice Kirika and Mireille romantic stuff (and action. You have to have action) while the angst goes on the back burner for a bit. Of course, you know it will rear its angsty head again in the future at some point. ^_^


	9. Morning Sunlight

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The ninth chapter. More plot stuff. Oh, and note that the majority if not all of Mireille and Kirika's outfits in this fanfic are taken from the clothing they wore in the series, and from any official images of them. Also, variations for the outfits they wore are used (i.e. Kirika wearing her French flag t-shirt with her parka). Why am I saying this? For visual aids, of course. ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 9 - Morning Sunlight

Mireille slowly opened her bleary eyes and yawned quietly, before wincing at the uncomfortable throbbing ache that suffused the left side of her face with the latter action. But the painful reminder of her scarred and tender cheek did not ebb her positive mood in the least. It was a new morning of a new day, a day when everything would be turned around for her and Kirika, her partner… her love. This morning would not be like the others before it, tarnished by an ever-thickening wall enforcing a remote distance between their hearts. The sun had risen on a fresh dawn, and with it, the desolate wall had fallen, the mortar holding its bricks together crumbling, struck a mortal blow by the rejuvenating light shining upon it. It was a second chance for Mireille, a second chance to do things right. The pristine daylight not only demolished the deep wedge separating her and Kirika, but also illuminated a new route on the black path to the blonde, one crafted specifically for two. While the pitiless threats against the duo still existed to meet them head-on along their dark route, the sure knowledge did not discourage Mireille's spirits. For neither she nor Kirika were alone to face them-they had each other. They were a partnership, and as such, would confront the perils lined against them as one. Together. As they should have done from the very beginning.

Mireille turned her head to where Kirika was slumbering next to her in their bed. The girl was on her side, clinging to Mireille closely, as per usual. However, her embrace was a little stronger than typical, the toned muscles of her arm around the blonde's waist distinctly taut. Yet Mireille took no real enjoyment from her partner's tight hug as she normally would have-it was but another testament of her neglect, her failure. Kirika's habit of cuddling into Mireille during her sleep was no longer deemed as solely an endearing quirk by the Corsican, but now additionally as an act of need on the diminutive girl's part, be it an unconscious one or otherwise. That Kirika was holding her near with increased enthusiasm was damning proof of Mireille's maltreatment towards her… and how much she required the woman's care.

Kirika's eyes crept open at Mireille's movement, the girl's senses acute as ever, picking up the tiniest amount of motion from her bedfellow. Her docile reddish-brown eyes met the blonde's own blue ones with an avid interest. The two young women then simply regarded one another for a few moments, a comfortable silence arising between them-a far cry from the other silence that had stifled conversation and temperaments in recent days.

A small, gentle smile broke out on Mireille's features, her icy azure eyes taking on a compassionate shade; that of clear summer morning's sky. "How are you feeling?" she asked Kirika quietly in a sympathetic tone.

"I'm okay," Kirika replied just as softly. To Mireille's slight surprise but considerable delight the girl then smiled. It was faint smile, but a sweet one nonetheless, the gesture doing wonders to make her pretty face all the more beautiful. It had been a long time since Mireille had seen such a lovely and heart-warming sight adorn her partner's cute visage, and the blonde felt her own smile unconsciously grow in tandem.

Kirika's expression then became anxious all of a sudden, her smile gone-and its appearance entirely too brief in Mireille's opinion-before she scooted even closer to the blonde if that were possible, her lithe body squeezing snugly up against the woman's side, with her face scant inches from the Corsican's own. The darkhaired girl's expressive eyes went to Mireille's scratched and partially obscured left cheek resting on the pillow for a couple of seconds, before returning to her partner's gaze. Her lips parted slightly but then closed again, as though she wished to say something but couldn't quite find the words. Nevertheless, Mireille didn't need Kirika's words to know what was dancing earnestly on the tip of her tongue and laying heavy on her mind.

"I told you before; I'm fine," Mireille patiently placated her visibly concerned partner, placing one hand-with only an instant's hesitation-reassuringly on Kirika's lean forearm arranged atop her stomach. "It's nothing."

"Mmm," Kirika mumbled, nodding, but not sounding nor looking very convinced.

Mireille held back a longsuffering sigh. For as long as she could recall Kirika had always been remarkably protective of her, insistently following her around wherever she went regardless of the time of day or where precisely she was going like a little lost puppy… or perhaps more accurately, an extremely loyal guard dog. Once, the girl had practically slain the entire ranks of a Taiwanese criminal syndicate in open combat simply to liberate Mireille from their clutches sheer minutes after the woman's capture-the level of her devotion was immense to say the least. The only cases when Mireille had successfully managed to persuade Kirika to part from her side and remain behind was when she had been able to provide the faithful girl with a compelling argument that declared it would be in the Corsican's benefit if she complied. However, if Mireille were proceeding into danger, then any rationale or even outright demand for her younger partner to stay behind would fall on deaf ears. Mireille's seeming influence over Kirika counted for naught when her personal security was involved-a truth that had exasperated the blonde assassin on a number of occasions.

And now with Mireille being injured, despite that injury consisting of merely a few superficial cuts, she could expect her partner to be even doubly more protective of her. She doubted whether Kirika would so much as let her leave her sight when outside of the apartment before the wounds healed. The sooner Mireille masked the lacerations on her cheek with make-up the better; she didn't want the girl constantly fussing over her-it would get tiresome quickly… and she didn't like it when Kirika worried. Still… it certainly was nice to have someone fret about her.

"What about you?" Mireille countered, her reflective thoughts reminding her of another, momentous, instance when Kirika had exhibited her profound loyalty-her profound love-for her. "Your wound…" she elaborated quietly, in part to take the softhearted girl's mind off of her injury, and in another out of genuine concern. Mireille hadn't inquired about Kirika's health in quite a long while, her daily physical checks forgone in the face of the recurrence of Soldats in their lives, presuming that since she wasn't complaining-as if Kirika would complain! Another fool excuse!-or clearly hurting, that she had recovered fully from her old gunshot wound. It was yet further mistreatment by Mireille.

"Mmm," Kirika said in the negative, shaking her head where it lay on the pillow next to Mireille's, "it's okay, now."

"Let me see it anyway," Mireille kindly persisted, smiling encouragingly.

Kirika emitted a second peep, this one of happy obedience, and then pushed down the bedcovers from her body and raised the hem of her vest, revealing the left side of her skinny abdomen to her older partner's attentive eyes.

Mireille saw that Kirika's wound appeared roughly the same as she remembered the last time she had studied it, merely a faded scar less than an inch long, barely noticeable unless the observer knew where to look. She examined it carefully for several moments-pointedly ignoring the unpleasant clenching around her heart at the sight of the souvenir Kirika had picked up by skirting so close to death for her sake-while speculating how to broach another subject she needed to quiz the reticent girl on, one connected to the permanent scar blemishing her partner's body; a trademark of their profession and the risks that came with it.

Eventually, following a short period of silence and a subsequent resigned sigh from the woman, Mireille voiced her unease, but consciously kept any sign of it from her tone. "Are you sure you're up to… this?" she said softly but seriously, gazing levelly into Kirika's eyes. Mireille still wasn't totally certain what the stimulus behind Kirika bursting into tears the previous night had been, but like the reasons for her partner freezing up in the subway station before it, she was fairly confident it was related to killing those men in the Metro. Looking back, her insensitive remark praising the girl's grisly performance probably hadn't helped matters either; instead of bolstering Kirika's spirits, it had in all likelihood amplified her sorrow.

As a result of Kirika's disconcerting behaviour last night and of her past misgivings that now plainly could not be offhandedly dismissed as something she would 'get over' in time as Mireille had foolishly duped herself into believing, the Corsican assassin had to be absolutely positive her partner was up to handling the adversities ahead. If Kirika were to crack again at a crucial instant, for example during one similar to the prior situation in the Metro, then there was a high probability that she would be killed. It had been pure luck the girl had snapped out of her stupor in time to prevent a tragedy, but the outcome of the next incident might be utterly-and terribly-different. Mireille would *not* lead Kirika to an early grave; if her feelings towards murder were unstable, then the woman had to know immediately… even if her concern was somewhat belated, she regretfully admitted. Mireille was not willing to gamble with Kirika's life; she would face the false Noir and whatever cronies they enlisted to assist them solo if she had to, her partner's reservations to her launching herself into danger unaccompanied be damned.

To Mireille's mild surprise, Kirika nodded her head firmly, and for a second the woman thought she had glimpsed something smoulder deep in the brown depths of her eyes, with a glimmer of something hard in the core beneath, like cold steel glinting in sunlight. But it was gone before she knew it, Kirika's meek look restored as if it had never left in the first place. Curiously, for some reason that simple gesture was enough to convince Mireille of her partner's readiness however, eliciting a smile from the blonde, albeit one tinged with a hint of sadness at the introverted girl's choice.

"Alright," she acquiesced just as straightforwardly and in the same soft voice she had adopted beforehand, holding her steady gaze with Kirika for a couple of extra moments.

Mireille then broke the stare and rolled away from Kirika onto her right side, before she sat up and climbed out of bed, leaving the girl's heartfelt embrace. There were many vital tasks for her-for *them*-to do today. Mireille and Kirika at long last had a sufficient lead on Ryosuke and Vincent, or at least one worth investigating. The Corsican was aware of who Millet-Richard Millet-was; it would be rather remiss of her to not be informed on the generally noteworthy people in the underworld of her own home city. But Millet was a reasonably small-time gang boss dabbling in prostitution and some paltry drug dealing, not a big name at all in Paris' criminal circles. Why the fake Noir had procured his and his trivial syndicate's aid was puzzling. Was it for relative anonymity? Or was it perhaps to obtain fodder to dispatch against a powerful rival- 'Noir'-for an unknown purpose? And more importantly, not to mention also a little disturbingly, how had the group anticipated that Mireille and Kirika would be walking down that specific street last night out of all the other streets in Paris? To say the odds were slim was an understatement.

Whatever the basis for Ryosuke and Vincent's seemingly ill-advised hiring decision, along with the means Millet's men had used to track Mireille and Kirika down, the drafted crime boss and his apparent base of operations, 'Slick Chicks', would have to be looked into. Of course, there was always the prospect that the gangster Mireille had interrogated had lied through his teeth-the woman had known of some individuals who could blather elaborate and compelling falsehoods realistically even when staring the Reaper squarely in the face. But she and Kirika had no choice in how to proceed in spite of this possibility; the goon's testimony was all they had to go on.

However, finding answers to her questions together with researching the new enemy could wait. Mireille turned her head to look over her shoulder, back to where Kirika lay on her side, unmoved from her position in the bed. "You know, I haven't eaten a decent breakfast since the last one you prepared for me," she said playfully, while favouring the expressionless girl with a wide, impish smile. "What do you say about having a full course one this morning?" Mireille turned around fully, tilting her head teasingly to one side. "You can help me, too, if you wish…"she added enticingly, knowing that Kirika wouldn't be happy otherwise.

For the time being, all tasks associated with Ryosuke and Vincent and their 'friends' didn't matter; Kirika's needs and desires were paramount. Mireille had neglected her appallingly in the name of the new threat opposing them, but no longer would the girl play second fiddle to *anything*-nothing was more important than her, the young woman Mireille loved. Nevertheless, the blonde had a considerable amount of making up to do, and what better time to start than this perfect, fresh and sunny morning.

* * *

"Hm. You have your instructions. Keep me informed." Breffort pressed the button to end the secure call on his mobile phone, and then resumed gazing out his office window overlooking the city. The location of his Paris-based office provided a panoramic vision of the magnificent capitol of France, which looked especially magnificent at present, its streets and buildings both antiquated and modern enveloped in the soft early morning sunlight. But as he had anticipated, this dawn's illumination had revealed much more than just a historic metropolis.

Breffort replaced his mobile phone in the inside pocket of his charcoal suit jacket, and then allowed himself a quiet sigh-one of mild, yet sincere, relief. It had been a fortunate occurrence when Ishinomori and Hsu had walked into the workplace of local felon Richard Millet and appointed his organisation's services… although if truth were told the Soldats official had no clue why the two consummate assassins had even bothered to procure outsider assistance from such a small and quite insignificant syndicate. But the 'why' didn't honestly matter… even if it did cast further intrigue upon the two men's still unexplained motivation for being here in Paris.

Ishinomori and Hsu's decision to utilise hired guns had imparted a valuable opportunity for Breffort to test whether Bouquet and her partner were still worthy of being labelled with the title of Noir. To that end, the Soldats member had gifted one of his operatives-who had wormed his way deep into Millet's midst and had been remaining undercover there for some time, like countless other such agents who Breffort had inserted into every even vaguely prominent organised group in the city, both big and small alike-with choice information, among which included the precise whereabouts of Bouquet and her partner during their excursion last night. As instructed, Breffort's agent had passed on that knowledge to Millet's would-be hitmen, but if the five corpses of known mobsters that had cropped up in the light of this morning's sunrise were any indication, it had done them very little good. Not that Breffort minded-the slaying of Millet's men symbolised that Noir yet had some talent, which had been the genuine and sole purpose for the ill-fated group of gangsters, a purpose they had unknowingly sacrificed their lives to fulfil.

However, disposing of five assailants simultaneously was a simple task for an above average assassin, and more so for a pair of them. Noir's ordeal the previous night had merely been the opening challenge of their examination, and one that Breffort had been almost totally certain they would survive. No, the real test would come later. With the deaths of the men, Bouquet and her partner now had the scent of a larger pack of foes-Millet and his organisation. There was still his entire group left for the duo to contend with… which they would do so willingly. Breffort knew Mireille Bouquet; she was not the type to simply take things lying down. She would do her utmost to discover who had been responsible for the attack last night, and then unleash terrible vengeance upon them. Yes, she could be such a vengeful young woman… a trait Breffort could and would use to his advantage. Bouquet would definitely take her partner and retaliate against Millet-it was only a matter of when. Completely destroying a criminal syndicate single-handedly would be the true test of Noir's skills and whether they had dulled or not. But Breffort was confident they would pass the trial with flying colours. He did not fear for their safety. Nor would he miss the activities of a minor resident crime group after it had been wiped out; it was just one of many in a city-in a world-full of darkness.

While a sizeable conflict would likely be taking place in the city in the next couple of days-a conflict orchestrated to be sizeable by him-Breffort sincerely doubted that the real battle would be waged here in Paris. Even if Noir managed to assassinate Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu, the amputation of Kaede Ishinomori's Black Hands would not put an end to the crisis. In spite of their capabilities, Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu were still but two individuals, simply a tiny-if resilient-scale on a much larger serpent… although more or less the same could be said about Noir. In a way, Breffort hoped that Bouquet and her partner would fall short of killing the pair here in the capitol; it would give him an excuse to send them overseas to the source of Soldats'… troubles. And there, Noir could be further used to his liking, invisibly collared with him surreptitiously holding their leash. In the long run, it would be better if Noir failed. Breffort *needed* them.

Nevertheless, he had to be very careful. Breffort had been keeping Noir under his surveillance long before he had ever recontacted them, but if Bouquet ever learned of his past or present scrutiny, it could pose an irritating problem. There would be little she could do if she did learn, however, besides being angered and killing his compromised watchers. Operatives could be easily replaced, and Breffort was aware that he was her only major ally outside of her partner, albeit a 'covert' one-she would not cut him off so rashly. Still, it would be irksome for Bouquet to know for an absolute fact that she and her partner were being observed; it could undermine his goals… and that had the potential to be catastrophic.

But the risk of Noir becoming wise to Breffort's attentive eyes was slim, and the Soldats member was not about to cease the activity even in the regrettable event they did find out-he had staked a great deal on those two young women alone; it would be sheer idiocy not to monitor their actions. Moreover, while Bouquet was a formidable woman of vast aptitude and intellect, he doubted she would be able to ferret out all of his spies, even if she did catch one of them. Breffort's agents were everywhere… and closer than Mireille Bouquet in all likelihood suspected. Even in the most obscure of places did Soldats see….

* * *

The man currently known as Jacques Rousseau snapped shut his mobile phone and shoved the petite device back into his dark blue pants pocket, before taking several nervous puffs on the lit cigarette between his lips. He sighed and looked towards the cloudless morning sky above, peering at the blue heavens through his black, square sunglasses, as if beseeching them for divine aid. Things were about to get very interesting… he just hoped he would live though those particular 'things'. If he did-which he fervently prayed-he could at least look forward to being reassigned elsewhere. While it would be a welcome change, Jacques was still somewhat sad about that. He had spent more than two years of his life with Millet and his group; it was only natural to be a little attached to them. Furthermore, working out of a strip club did have its benefits; benefits he enjoyed on a regular basis. But Jacques also enjoyed continuing to breathe, and weighed against that, loyalty to a gang he had infiltrated counted for squat. Besides, his loyalty was already owned by another, superior group.

Suddenly, Jacques heard the rear alleyway entrance of Slick Chicks burst open, followed by a frantic shout.

"Rousseau!" Molyneaux yelled as he ran past rusty dumpsters and battered trashcans overflowing with damp, putrid garbage towards Jacques turned back, his rapid footfalls echoing off the alleyway's graffiti-defaced walls. "Did you hear? Marceau and the others are dead; I shit you not! They were found a couple of hours ago in a subway entrance all full of holes! Cops are all over it, but Berlot confirmed it was them! Man, I can't believe this!"

Jacques plucked his cigarette from his mouth and dropped it to the ground, grinding it out beneath the sole of his shoe. "I already know…." he whispered under his breath, his hand touching the bulge of his mobile phone inside his pants' left pocket.

"Hey, are you listening to me? I said the men you sent are *dead!*" Molyneaux continued to howl, finally spurring Jacques into action. For the moment at least, the Soldats agent was still a part of Millet's syndicate. And he had a job to do… but not for Millet.

"What are you doing just whining at me for?" Jacques yelled as he whirled around to face Molyneaux's anxious countenance. "Has Mr. Millet been told yet? No? Then go do it, you moron!"

Jacques walked briskly to the back entrance of Slick Chicks barking additional orders at Molyneaux's as the fool scrambled madly ahead of him, stumbling in his reckless haste a few times and nearly planting his face into the litter-strewn pavement. Noir… they would be coming soon, possibly even as early as tonight. He had to prepare for their arrival-for what good it would do!-as per Breffort's orders. Breffort had warned him to expect them, and when a Soldats official of his ranking warned you, it was best to stand up and take notice. And with Noir being the anticipated 'guests', too…. Dear god. The legendary pair of assassins were coming *here*. It hadn't completely sunk in yet; it had been more than a week but Jacques was still wrapping his mind around the reality that the prestigious Noir was made up of only two young women, for god's sake! But if even a fraction of the rumours about the Eternal Darkness were true, then Jacques was beginning to seriously question his chances of surviving their advent, even with a whole syndicate behind him.

* * *

Kirika was standing with her back resting against the black wall separating the apartment's living room from the bedroom, her legs crossed at the ankles, simply gazing at Mireille as the woman studied her computer screen intently, engaged with investigating the validity of the information Millet's grilled man had bestowed upon them last night. Her normally subdued brown eyes virtually sparkled as she watched her partner at work, pushing the PC's mouse around on top of the billiard table with her right hand, while holding a cup full of tea that the girl had gladly made for her in her left. Soft, golden light from the morning sun streamed in through the apartment's row of windows, bathing Mireille where she sat in its warm and pure illumination. The sunlight caused her long flaxen tresses to shine even more radiantly, while the flawless fair skin exposed by her tight-fitting black crop top and low hip-hugging white pants appeared to attain further highs of splendour. The raw, angry red cuts had disappeared from her cheek, coated with cosmetics Kirika knew, but at present, she thought that perhaps the light had cleansed the blonde of all her ills, leaving behind a perfect being to grace this world.

Mireille crossed her legs and brought the cup in her hand to her lips, taking a brief sip of tea, her eyes remaining affixed to the computer's monitor. But as if the taste reminded her of who had prepared it, she then looked away from the screen to where Kirika was standing to her left, the woman's full lips curling into a fond smile directed squarely at her partner. It was a small and gentle smile, but one of genuine affection, and to the love-starved girl, it meant a lot-she felt her own lips form a faint smile in answer. Moreover, it enhanced the wondrous vision before Kirika's eyes tenfold. A gently glowing nimbus of sunlight outlined Mireille's form at her turn, glimmering predominantly around her blonde locks, while further light caused her blue eyes to glitter brilliantly. Along with her stunning smile, the picture she painted was beyond all doubt… beautiful. Never before had Kirika so completely understood the meaning of beauty. But this was far removed from mere physical beauty; it transcended it onto another plane entirely. While Mireille was gorgeous in a simple bodily sense, the beauty that shone through to Kirika was also from her very spirit, her very heart. The woman was beautiful to her core, marvellous on the inside as well as out. Mireille really was a beautiful person, but one who possessed beauty in its every shape and form. Maybe Kirika's prior imaginings about a perfect being had a ring of truth to them after all. Only an angel could ever hope to even match her partner's loveliness. An angel… yes, the divine scene blessing her eyes reminded the girl of pictures of angels she had seen in books. While Mireille may have been lacking those other angels' white feathery wings, she was no less akin to their celestial flock. Kirika felt privileged merely being in her presence, permitted to bask in her heavenly majesty.

Mireille put her cup down on the billiard table and returned her attention to the computer, but her fleeting look had imparted a lasting impression on her partner. Kirika felt the exhilarating sensation fill her chest similar to last night; her unseen wound now an odd source of giddy euphoria that she never tired of experiencing. Gazing upon Mireille seemed to promote that feeling inside of her, although to varying quantities. It was a welcome change to the agony that had seared inside her ever-tightening chest, until she thought she would collapse from the pain, for days before. She hadn't felt this… content… this happy, since returning from the Manor with Mireille to Paris.

Kirika was aware that part of her content was due to her newfound-or rather, newly reintroduced-lone purpose in life. She would be a steadfast defender to the breathtaking wingless angel she had fallen in love with. Odette Bouquet was dead by Kirika's hands; there was nothing the girl could do for her or any of her departed family but to honour her last, dying, wish and dedicate herself for the rest of her days to the woman's only surviving child. Furthermore, she owed it to Mireille for taking her parents' and brother's lives and causing her such torment. Perhaps that was why the blonde had lost her wings; her sinful craving for vengeance as a direct consequence of Kirika's misdeed had consumed them.

Kirika's head lowered to the floor, where the sunbeams spilling through the windows stopped before reaching her feet, leaving her swallowed in shadow. Her smile receded and the elation in her chest drained away, until only hollowness remained. Murdering Mireille's family and causing her love such anguish was the girl's greatest sin, the blackest, the one that stood out amongst all the others on her lengthy list of crimes. Maybe so devoting herself towards Odette Bouquet's final request was a form of atonement on Kirika's part, but if that were the case, it was an atonement she knew would never come to fruition. Nevertheless, it was an atonement she would spend the rest of her life trying to achieve despite possessing no illusions of having any chance of success. Repentance would always be out of her reach for all of her sins… as it should be. Kirika was a sinner, and would remain as such until her death and beyond.

However, in spite of her willingness to fight and kill for Mireille's sake, in spite of her understanding that she was a sinner unworthy of forgiveness, Kirika still clung to her hope, still clung to her dream not seen through. She'd had a taste of that dream following her return to Paris before the emergence of the false Noir, but merely the barest one, just enough to recognise that its soothing flavour was something she yearned for like nothing else. Kirika aspired to one day have that tranquil life spent with Mireille again, one where the memories of her crimes could dim somewhat, granting her inner peace. A life where her worries consisted of what to make Mireille for dinner, and not whether the woman would even survive the night. Kirika would keep pursing that peaceful tomorrow, that tomorrow just visible and no more on the horizon of today.

After all, even a sinner could dream.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Okay, so this chapter was sort of shorter than usual and not that much happen. Oh well. I had to do some plot preparations for the big run of action coming up ahead, and also write about Mireille and Kirika's new frames of mind. Remember, it's not like I conclude a chapter when it gets too lengthy, but rather when I've written what I have to (and on occasion that can become *very* lengthy!). ^_^

I considered having Breffort refer to himself by his first name during his part, but I decided against it. It just wouldn't have felt right.


	10. Vendettas

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The tenth chapter.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 10 - Vendettas

"Our primary objective is learning what Millet knows," Mireille briefed Kirika, who was seated sedately across from her in their private booth, her eyes lowered to the oily surface of the table in front of them, the cracks between each of its wooden panels caked with a build up of day's-or perhaps even month's-worth of grime. The small, gloomy and quite squalid bar Mireille had chosen to pass the daylight hours in was not the most sanitary or chic of drinking establishments she was accustomed to, but it was quiet with little to no clientele whatsoever, in spite of its seamy location deep in Paris' red light district. But it was only the afternoon, and Pigalle's red lights were dimmed or switched off completely, the majority awaiting the sun to fall and disappear below the horizon before replacing its warm, wholesome glow with a seedier sort. And the neon shine of those particular lights would attract patrons to the quarter like moths to flame.

But for this hour of the day, Pigalle held little appeal except to only the most dedicated aficionados of the erotic arts, or perhaps more correctly, the most sleaziest of perverts. Mireille and Kirika were a good number of blocks away from the upmarket establishments offering tasteful and elegant exhibitions of bare flesh, and instead firmly entrenched in the region where the Corsican could have a sordid romp between the sheets with several one-time lovers all at once for merely a fistful of Euros. However, Millet's headquarters, a strip club quaintly named Slick Chicks-a fact that Mireille had confirmed from her sources early this morning-was to be found just a short yet shrewd distance along from the peaceful if grubby bar the blonde and her diminutive counterpart were in, nominating it as a viable staging point for their impending operation against the trifling crime boss and his paltry syndicate. Nevertheless, bringing Kirika into such an unsavoury environment had given Mireille pause-the girl did still retain some of her innocence that was yet to be corrupted or lost during the tortures of her harsh young life. But there had been very little choice in the matter; Kirika was Mireille's partner, and where the blonde went, the girl followed. They were a team.

"Prior to that, however, we must confirm that he is actually in the building before we commit ourselves wholly." Mireille reached casually under her light lavender coat, readjusting her fully loaded Walther P99 pistol holstered against her left ribs. "But that's nothing one of his minions and a little… encouragement… can't provide," the woman went on, her hand lingering on her concealed firearm meaningfully for an instant while her gaze remained stationary on the table, mirroring Kirika's.

Mireille's lips moved indiscernibly and she spoke in a low, soft voice, as not to arouse undesirable attention even in the virtually deserted bar. One never knew who could be eavesdropping, after all, and there was no reason why a member of Millet's gang wouldn't frequent the place despite the time of day. Yet to the idle onlooker, she and Kirika were just two young women having a quiet-and rather one-sided-chat, the words exchanged between them indistinguishable from formless mumbles. But even if the onlooker could make out Mireille and Kirika's speech, unless they were familiar with Japanese the two assassins' topic of discussion would continue to be a mystery.

Of course it may be said that Mireille and Kirika could have avoided such precautions if the Corsican had opted to inform her partner on the mission's details in the security and privacy of their apartment. However, the woman had wanted to scout the exterior of Slick Chicks and get a positive visual on possible entrances into the club first before formulating a plan to disclose to her. The sole information Mireille had bestowed upon Kirika at their home had been the specifics about their target, Richard Millet, including a photo of the man so the girl could recognise and not mistakenly kill him before they could pump him for facts on their chief enemies; Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu.

"We'll stick together, with our method of entry being via the alley to the building's rear," Mireille said, recalling the long passageway leading behind Slick Chicks from a street to the club's right flank. Entering by the front entrance would be pure foolishness-Millet was apparently considerably educated on her and Kirika; the doormen would undoubtedly be on the look out for their faces, especially after they had shot five of their fellow gangsters to death the previous night.

"The same means will be used for withdrawal as well. That should theoretically keep encounters with non-combatants at a minimum." That was another-while albeit lessor-reason why Mireille did not want to take a more direct approach to getting inside Slick Chicks; she didn't want her and Kirika bumping into patrons or employees of the establishment. The blonde so detested it when bystanders got in the way of an assignment; it tended to cause things to become… complicated. If the poor unfortunates who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time caught a glimpse of her face, then… well, the less said about that the better. Suffice to say that one major tenet of being a contract killer her Uncle Claude had taught her was to leave no witnesses to a hit.

"As I told you before Millet is strictly small-time, so expect resistance to be light," Mireille continued, banishing her foul-tasting memories back to the recesses of her mind. "Still, I'm not certain of the exact numbers inside, and don't want to rouse an overwhelming force directly against us if we can prevent it, so I've decided it would be sensible to go in quiet-in and out without so much as a hint of a whisper. I doubt that they will be expecting a reprisal from us so soon, either, which will work to our advantage." The woman paused to take a moment to wet her dry throat and refresh her voice with a drink of her mineral water, before she set the glass down on the booth's table again. "We'll move after sunset," she finished gravely. "There's a higher likelihood that Millet will be present in the club during its opening times at night than now during the day-he acts as the manager of the 'gentleman's' establishment. It means an increased likelihood of stumbling upon civilians, but it can't be helped."

Mireille had considered putting off any retaliatory action against Millet and his men until a later date rather than tonight, perhaps to delve more meticulously into his background and hence into his resources-for example the arsenal available to his men-and in turn formulate a more comprehensive strategy to locate and grill the crime boss. But if the Corsican had selected that path, it would consequently give Millet further time to prepare for her and her partner's eventual strike, and the opportunity to catch him and his group unawares would fade as the days ticked by. On weighting the pros and cons between the two options, Mireille had concluded that surprise compensated for the lack of fine detail.

Mireille at last looked up from the table at Kirika, the girl doing likewise at the blonde's movement. "Okay?" the woman asked in a louder, clearer voice, her expectant expression openly yet gently prompting for a response.

"Mmm," Kirika uttered with a nod, her cute and innocent countenance and demeanour causing pangs along Mireille's normally hardened heartstrings.

The experienced Corsican assassin watched with melancholic eyes as her partner picked up her soda and sipped the beverage through a straw, the introverted girl's gaze wandering around the dusty bar with an idle curiosity. Mireille then sighed softly and looked away as she retrieved her own drink from the table, taking several swallows from it. Such a soft-hearted girl like Kirika wasn't meant for this unforgiving life. She should have the lifestyle of a normal girl her age; instead of being subjected to cold data for their latest assignment from Mireille, she should be listening to educational lectures from teachers in high school. Furthermore her daily concerns should be those of an average girl too, like exams and boys. Well maybe not boys, Mireille mentally amended with a wry smile. But the fact remained Kirika had been pushed into the life of an assassin; it had never been her decision to be a killer; a contrast to Mireille. The blonde wondered how things would have turned out if Altena hadn't aspired to revive Noir. Would she and Kirika have even met? …Probably not. Mireille and Kirika would most likely be leading exceptionally mundane lives in separate countries.

Mireille mused whether she would be willing to trade the existence she had now with Kirika for that alternate one. Her family would be alive, and she would no doubt be still in Corsica whiling away the lazy days on her parents' estate. Kirika would be with her own family, too, perhaps. And neither would be assassins; neither would have known the cruel life they had to live now.

Still, Mireille would have never partnered up with Kirika, they would have never known each other… and they would have never fallen in love. If that alternate existence were to become a reality, it could be said that it would harbour a tragedy as great as their present existence possessed… maybe even a greater one. Perhaps Mireille should be thankful to Altena for ruining both her and Kirika's lives at such a young age.

Mireille put down her water and flicked some of her blonde locks over her right shoulder in mild irritation. She had never considered herself a romantic, and usually would not waste time on such frivolous contemplations. But as she was beginning to realise these days, being in love had a way of changing a person. It could be a little frightening sometimes; certainly, Mireille had been quite shocked at her behaviour and thoughts on several occasions… that was, when could discern that she *should* be shocked-oft times her mind viewed her uncharacteristic actions and feelings as completely natural. However, that fear was starting to grow fainter, to a point where Mireille didn't mind the changes that much at all anymore. Indeed, after realising her neglect of Kirika, she even welcomed them now-they made her a better person. And Mireille wanted to become a better person for Kirika; she wanted to live up to the grand image of herself she saw reflected in the brown depths of the girl's lovely eyes. Mireille wanted to truly be the woman she knew Kirika looked up to her as… and loved her as.

Suddenly overcome by a rush of affection she desperately needed to convey to Kirika, Mireille focused her gaze on the petite girl. "Kirika," she spoke tenderly, attracting her partner's roaming eyes to hers. After seeing that she had gotten her counterpart's attention, Mireille leaned slightly forwards and tentatively extended a hand across the table, carefully taking Kirika's glass of soda from her grasp and placing it to one side while the girl watched, bemused. Then, following another moment of mild uncertainty, Mireille's fingertips brushed delicately against Kirika's right palm, before the woman took hold of her partner's dainty hand outright in a gentle grip, covering it with her own and eliciting a blink and short peep of surprise from her fellow assassin. She lowered their clasped hands to the surface of the table, Kirika's beneath hers as the girl looked on in what appeared to be wonder, and then strengthened her grasp, giving her partner's hand a warm squeeze.

"Kirika," Mireille repeated fondly with a supportive smile, gazing solemnly into Kirika's exquisite eyes, "you know you can talk to me about anything, don't you?"

"Mmm," Kirika replied, nodding slightly with a rather puzzled expression on her face, her eyes staring a little vacantly into the blonde's blue ones.

Mireille sighed and her smile faltered some, unsure whether her partner truly understood what she meant. She was aware that if Kirika had been more open with her they might have averted both of the girl's breakdowns last night... that was, if the inconsiderate Corsican had been willing to act on the early warning, of course. However, a ready exchange of dialogue was regrettably not a feature that their relationship was high on. Mireille wanted to change this facet of their partnership. While she knew Kirika better than anyone, she wasn't a mind reader. Kirika was so withdrawn and had a propensity to keep all her thoughts close to her chest, leaving Mireille to gauge how she was feeling through other means, such as through the girl's body language and behaviour, which on occasion had turned out to be unreliable. The blonde knew that her partner would probably always be relatively introverted-it was deep-seated in her character, her nature-but she at least wanted Kirika to open her heart and mind to *someone*. And obviously that 'someone' should be Mireille-as if it could be anybody else? Their life as assassins may be cruel, but Mireille wanted to help Kirika through it any way she could, in one part as her partner in arms who watched her back, and in another as her closest-or more accurately, sole-confidant who provided emotional support. However, the latter would be better served if Kirika permitted Mireille to sometimes glimpse what was behind those docile brown eyes of hers. As a result, the woman sought to coax her out of her taciturn shell… the sooner the better.

Mireille's smile reinforced itself, and she stroked her thumb softly across the back of Kirika's hand. "I mean it. You can talk to me about anything at all," she tried again, "your troubles, your thoughts, your feelings; *anything*, no matter what it is."

Kirika looked down at where her hand was being caressed by Mireille's and then returned her gaze to the blonde, a small smile brightening her features. It made her appear much like the ordinary girl she deserved to be, one who had just been delighted by someone she held in high regard. "I know, Mireille," she intoned quietly, seeming to draw out her partner's name reverently in the Corsican's ears.

Mireille's smile became especially affectionate, bolstered by the heart-warming vision in front of her eyes. It had been a simple answer, but coming from Kirika, it was more than enough.

Before she knew what she was doing, the woman gently interlaced the fingers of her left hand with Kirika's right, locking them smoothly together until their palms touched each other's. Mireille felt Kirika tighten her grasp at the same instant she did, their fingers linking even more strongly, both young women still gazing deeply into one another's eyes, as if attempting to delve into the other's very soul. It was the first time they shared the intimacy of holding hands-truly holding hands-and oddly, despite the relative simplicity of the act, Mireille's heart swelled blissfully in her chest. Looking into Kirika's captivating brown eyes now, she felt closer to her than she had in a long while, and she was certain the darkhaired girl felt the same way too.

Mireille lifted their clasped hands off the booth's table and into the air above it, their elbows propped on its greasy surface. Looking at their coupled hands, the woman saw the genuine reality behind their relationship. She and Kirika were joined, tied together. Their lives, their hearts-they were one. If the alternate reality she had deliberated on earlier were to come about, she was positive that she and Kirika would meet one day, somehow and someplace, despite the odds against it… and they would eventually grow to feel the same way they did now. Mireille didn't believe in things like fate and soulmates, but here and now, she could seriously become a convert. In the past, they had been connected by the ancient and feared title of Noir, two killers surpassing all others, but Mireille realised what bound them now was something far greater than a mere legend. It was love. And it was wonderful.

* * *

"Great. Back to this dump. Ich," Vin complained vehemently as he entered the room he shared with his partner, Ryosuke, in the small boarding house on the outskirts of Paris. He stopped near the centre of the cramped two-bedded room, planting his hands on his hips huffily and screwing his mouth up in distaste while he looked around their meagre lodgings, clearly despising the sights that greeted him. "I don't know which I hate more; wandering the dirty streets of the city fruitlessly, or returning to this crap hole!"

Ryosuke walked into the room behind Vin, his expression stony, ignoring his fussy companion's grumbling. He had heard it all before. Nevertheless, Vin's incessant moaning was starting to test even Ryosuke's stoic patience. The triad member was well aware of the reasons why they had to endure these premises yet in spite of that he insisted on moaning about the quality of their accommodations, nitpicking over every little thing again and again, repeating his tired tirade each and every time he came into the room. He was becoming entirely too used to a pampered existence these days; Vin seemed to be slowly but surely forgetting his modest roots… and that was something one ought to never forget. One must always hold family-be it one's blood or adopted kin-with the utmost reverence, close to one's heart where it could not be befouled by the corruption of the outside world. But of course, any disloyalty amongst family would shatter those sacred bonds and forfeit that reverence without the slightest leniency… and kindred who had betrayed their own were to be regarded with the purest abhorrence one could muster, something Ryosuke was very familiar with.

"God, would you look at this?" Vin whined as he looked down at the television set positioned on the table a short distance from the end of the two single beds, unwelcomely breaking into Ryosuke's thoughts. The black-haired man raised his head to share his latest annoyance with his partner, a frown of irritation plastered on his face. "Look, I just noticed that the TV is bolted to the damn table!" Vin revealed, gesturing roughly at the offending appliance with his hands. He turned back to the television and then shook his head in apparent gall, his mouth hanging half open. "What, does that old bat of a landlord think we'd swipe this piece of shit hunk of junk? I don't even know what bloody era it was made in, for god's sake!" Vin spat out another heated curse and banged the side of the TV with his hand, rattling the device-but not moving it even a millimetre from its location on the table-before thankfully whirling away from the sight. He threw his head back and covered his eyes with a forearm, gritting his teeth as if he was experiencing an immense discomfort. "I wanna go home," he sniffled pathetically, "this place smells like old people, too. I can't stand it!"

Ryosuke, sensing that Vin was done-for now, at any rate-shut the room's door, wondering if the 'old bat' had heard his partner's rant. The white-haired assassin then eased himself down into the only chair available; a rickety, unvarnished straight-backed wooden chair by the door that would have burrowed some severe splinters under his skin if not for the protection of his unique coat. Splinters or bullets, it was all the same.

Ryosuke turned his head a fraction to the solitary window in the room, noting the dying rays of sunlight filtering through the dust-lined blinds while Vin flopped onto his back on his bed with a wretched whimper, his arm remaining over his eyes. Deciding that it was safe, he pulled off his circular blue-tinted sunglasses, slipping them away inside his coat. It had been an exceptionally vibrant, sunny day today, the sort that Ryosuke reviled the most. If not for his sunglasses, he doubted whether he would have been able to go outside at all; his eyes did not take kindly to bright light when his mind was in the throes of its throbbing torment-it amplified the pain.

Not that his and Vin's most recent expedition out into the archaic parts of Paris had been worth the bother. Despite the two Soldats operatives' focus now being diverted away from them, allowing them improved freedom to move around and search, still they had discovered nothing. No item, no leads-no trace. Hiring that fool's men, laying low in a simple room for rent in an elderly Parisian's dilapidated house on the fringes of the capitol-it had all been for nothing.

Ryosuke sighed softly. He wanted to go home, too.

"That kid's back again," Vin suddenly said in a quiet voice, one far different from his previous whining tone, and one that captured Ryosuke's interest.

Ryosuke looked in Vin's direction and observed that he was still lying flat on his back on the bed with his eyes veiled, and then returned his gaze to the window, catching a shadow of movement partially obscuring the fading beams of dusk on the other side of the grimy horizontal blinds. With the silence of the room, the black-clad man could also make out the shuffling of feet just outside the window, proving beyond doubt that Vin was correct. For all of his juvenile antics, Vin was in fact a highly skilled hitman with keenly honed senses-he was at Ryosuke's side for a definite reason.

Ryosuke sharply stood up from his rocky chair, his abrupt movement prompting Vin to shift his forearm higher on his head and peer at his comrade through half-lidded eyes.

"Let's go," Ryosuke said simply, knowing that his intentions would be perfectly clear to Vin. He was weary of scouring Paris for Dominique's benefit and it was clear his partner had been too for a considerable length of time; they needed a short, temporary diversion. The young man snooping around outside their room had been dropping by the boarding house regularly the past couple of days, sometimes even venturing inside and surreptitiously asking the aged landlord probing questions, but judging by his ineptitude in spying, was indubitably *not* Soldats property. And if that wasn't enough evidence, Ryosuke had in addition caught a handful of fleeting looks of his and Vin's amateur stalker… and the accumulation of glimpses had not left the impression of a knowledgeable shadow. But whoever he was, he appeared to have an interest in Ryosuke and Vin's activities. And that was more than enough for the black-garbed assassin to act on. It was probably nothing, however-most likely a nosy teenager prying into their business out of boredom or to appease a personal fetish, but at the very least it would give Ryosuke and his partner something to take their frazzled minds off of their insufferable mission for one or two hours.

Vin merely blinked at his reticent brother-in-arms for a second, and then sat up quickly, his surprised countenance saying it all. He started to open his mouth to say something, but then seemed to think better of it and instead eagerly hopped off the bed and onto his feet.

"Guess I better wear black…" he said with a lopsided grin, his nimble fingers undoing the knot in his gaudy orange tie.

* * *

Mireille ducked deftly and unnoticeably into the murky alley behind Slick Chicks from the brightly lit street bordering it, Kirika mirroring her quick manoeuvre in a blur of motion. The two assassins then rested just inside the alleyway, its deep shadows concealing them and hence any of their actions from curious eyes. The sun had set several hours ago, and Pigalle was now fully open for business, luring all manner of sleaze out from the stones they dwelled under during the daylight hours… and also drawing Mireille and Kirika out from their dingy barroom hideaway. Slick Chicks had opened, and it was time for the Corsican and her partner to make their move.

Mireille pulled out her Walther from its holster under her coat and then retrieved its covert counterpart from a pouch on the opposite side of her gun harass, affixing the silencer to the weapon's barrel. Kirika did likewise, attaching a silencer to her own pistol too, before nodding to the blonde, signalling to the woman that she was all set.

But instead of commencing the next step of the operation, Mireille simply looked at Kirika for a few moments, gazing into her eyes and wordlessly gauging if she truly was ready-and she wasn't referring to the girl's hardware. However, Kirika met the blonde's stare unshakably, albeit with a slight tension around her eyes, making them appear a little harder than usual. Determined. And not all apprehensive. Kirika had apparently honestly settled whatever issues she'd had with their line of work on her own. Still, Mireille wished she could have assisted her in finding a resolution to her problems.

Mireille at last inclined her head in answer to Kirika's gesture, and then made her way deeper into the alley, towards the light at the far end where the rear entrance to Millet's base resided, her gun remaining drawn. She skulked down the passageway with Kirika at her back, their many footfalls noiseless despite the pair's hurried pace. The alley was wide, wide enough for three people to traverse abreast in spite of the dumpsters and trashcans spilling over with rotting rubbish that piled up at the mould-covered bases of the receptacles, lining the edges of the passage. It provided the assassins with welcome freedom to pick out and utilise the gloom of the darkest spots in the alleyway, the pair of them weaving from one pitch-black shadow to another as they moved closer to Slick Chicks' backdoor at the end of the left hand wall. Being adept at stealthy approaches and other such covert practices was a prime requisite to being a professional killer, and both young women were exceedingly proficient in all methods of silent death. They were but the fleeting shadows of ghosts.

Before long Mireille and Kirika were on the fringes of the corona of light that shone feebly from the lone bulb stuck above the battered metal door to Millet's strip club. The duo halted there, crouched low, assessing the route ahead… and the obstacles that lurked there. Mireille espied two sentries-both male-dressed with similar flair to the gangsters that had ambushed her and Kirika in the Metro last night, one standing on either side of the door. Getting past them quietly wouldn't be very much bother at all, but unfortunately they had to at least keep one alive to tell them whether or not Millet was in the seamy establishment tonight. And killing a single guard without his friend alerting the rest inside Slick Chicks with shouts for help would be… tricky. Mireille and Kirika would need to subdue the surviving sentry a mere split second after slaying his companion or their current stealth advantage against Millet's syndicate would be lost.

While Mireille was pondering whether or not to simply shoot both guards and find another to interrogate inside the building, even if that meant more or less committing her and Kirika to proceeding further in the operation, the gangster nearest the assassins exchanged brief and muted words too low to hear with his comrade, and then abandoned his post by the club's backdoor. For a moment alarm gripped the Corsican and she held her breath anxiously as the guard strolled towards her and her partner's location, but a couple of metres before he was upon them he instead turned to face a gap between two rusty and graffiti-vandalised dumpsters. The guard then reached down to his crotch and the sharp sound of a zipper being undone permeated the alley, before it was traded for the pitter-patter of liquid hitting pavement and refuse as the man relieved himself.

Mireille looked at Kirika beside her, knowing that precisely the same thought was flowing through the girl's astute mind as was flowing through her own-this was an chance they were not likely to get again.

Quickly but quietly, the blonde assassin gestured with a hand signal for her partner to move across the alley to the right, which the dutiful girl readily obeyed. Mireille's blue eyes flicked to Kirika for a second as she scurried silently and swiftly through the darkness, her purple pleated skirt fluttering about her trim, lithe legs. She cleverly situated her waif-like body behind the end of a dumpster flush with the passageway's wall and still outside the pool of light. It placed Kirika in a position of concealment from the sentries yet allowed her a broad view of area and consequently granted her the comforting capability to give her partner full defensive coverage when the woman eventually ventured out from the shelter of the shadows. Mireille was in safe hands.

Mireille returned her attention to the pair of guards, most notably on the sentry behind the one obliviously whistling a soft tune as he urinated on a now soggy stack of old newspapers. In a lucky break, that particular gangster seemed to be taking the opportunity to have a cigarette while his friend was absent, his gaze directed downwards and away from the Corsican's location as he searched his pants' pockets for something, most probably a light.

Seeing that the coast was as clear as it was ever going to get, Mireille very, very cautiously took a step out of the murk she was hiding in and into the circle of light cast by the sole bulb over the backdoor, the hunched blonde's edgy blue eyes shifting warily back and forth between the two distracted guards as she moved. She chose her footsteps extremely carefully as she silently approached the guard closest to her, staying out of his peripheral vision and making sure to plant her boot soles on clean asphalt or at least not on any of the objects littering the ground that would make a sound, such as shards of broken glass. Meanwhile the experienced assassin kept her breathing relaxed and controlled, lest the whispering wheeze of air passing in and out of her lungs gave her away. Despite the heavy stress of the situation, Mireille remained perfectly calm, the palm of the hand firmly holding her gun not even developing the slightest hint of perspiration. This was what the woman did for a living-and she did it well. Mireille had numerous years of practice under her belt, years that had contained countless contracts she had fulfilled with flying colours. This was a walk in the park for her. She was as cool as an artic wind.

Right when Mireille was close enough behind the whistling sentry to reach out and tap him on the shoulder if she so desired, a man's voice froze her in her tracks, her eyes snapping instantly to the origin of the ominous sound and her trigger finger twitching.

"Hey, you got a ligh-"

The second guard's voice was rudely cut off as a silenced 9mm bullet struck him in the face just as he raised his head to look in Mireille and his friend's direction, the brutal shot bowling him over and sending his unlit cigarette flying from his mouth. Blood splattered against the light bulb over the back entrance to Slick Chicks, its puddle of illumination filling the end of the alley becoming spotted with dim patches in places.

The remaining gangster ceased whistling and started to turn his head towards where his now dead companion once stood, but the sudden threatening pressure of hard metal digging into the back of his skull halted the movement, the muscles in his entire body becoming taut.

"Don't move," Mireille whispered from behind the guard, pressing the silenced barrel of her Walther P99 harder into his head to underline her command.

"Can I at least zip up…?" the sentry-turned-hostage asked tentatively, his hands still down by his groin.

"No," the Corsican assassin said unemotionally after a short pause, as if she had genuinely been considering his appeal-which of course she hadn't been. She had the goon at her mercy, but that didn't mean he still couldn't somehow gain the upper hand. Even the most innocuous-seeming of requests had the potential to switch the roles of captor and captive in a blink of an eye. Just because Mireille was the one with the gun didn't mean she was all-powerful… that particular reality had led to the downfall of many women and men in similar scenarios such as this over the years. No, when one became a prisoner, one forfeited all of their rights to do *anything*. And besides, his back was to Mireille and Kirika; there was no chance the blonde's naïve partner would see anything she shouldn't.

The guard sighed, his shoulders relaxing a tad. "Damn, you're better than I'd thought," he commented ruefully. "I guess Rousseau wasn't talking shit after all."

"We have an appointment with Mr. Millet," Mireille said with a rather menacing timbre in her voice as Kirika emerged from the shadows behind her, the sharp girl arranging herself at an angle that covered the captured goon and the backdoor of the club in the problematic case anybody decided to pay a visit to the alleyway. "Is he in?"

"Yeah…" the gangster admitted in a guarded tone, "yeah he is."

"Thank you," Mireille said rather breezily, and then sent a round from her pistol into the man's brain. The sentry toppled forwards and landed in the space between the two dumpsters he had been relieving himself in, his face making a deadened splat as it hit wet garbage.

The mission was a go, much to Mireille's satisfaction. She hadn't told Kirika, but after grilling Millet for all he was worth she intended to kill him. While she usually followed the tenet that stated to always strictly view an assignment from a professional slant with religious adherence, if the blonde were honest with herself she knew she had a personal vendetta she sought to settle with Millet. Mireille was aware she should distance herself from feelings of revenge, but she was of Corsican blood; the craving for vengeance flowed in her very veins. And that said blood had been spilt under Millet's orders-the woman's trio of scars masked under a layer of foundation burned at the bitter memory.

But her negligible injuries made up merely the smallest part of her desire for retribution. Millet's ambush last night had-although perhaps indirectly-caused Kirika to shed precious tears. Make no mistake; Mireille was not seeking someone else to pass the blame to for what was exclusively her inexcusable failure. Millet and his now dead would-be hitmen *had* played a role in upsetting Kirika, even if it was a minor one. Still, maybe Mireille was simply looking for a way to alleviate her own guilt in regards to neglecting her partner, and Millet and his syndicate were easy targets. In any case, the Corsican assassin had to make the crime boss pay for the pain he had caused Kirika… for the pain they had caused them *both*. Yet this was only the first of Mireille's vendettas to resolve; Ryosuke and Vincent had a great deal to answer for themselves.

Mireille turned away from the corpse of the gangster she had slain and looked at Kirika, before motioning with her head towards the rear entrance of Slick Chicks, her eyes glancing over the girl for a second to make sure no one was coming down the opposite end of the alley as they had done. Kirika nodded, and then the pair of assassins prowled to the dented metal door, each young woman still picking their footsteps wisely for maximum stealth.

Kirika positioned herself to the right of the door, favouring the unmoving body of the other guard beside it with a dispassionate and momentary look as Mireille gripped the handle, preparing to enter the headquarters of their target. The blonde pushed the door an inch open-mildly surprised to find it unlocked-and then peeked cautiously inside. On the other side of the door was a corridor with grey concrete walls in a state of disrepair; cracks, and in some places, whole chunks of stone missing. Closed doors painted in a sickening dark brown were dotted along the right hand wall, while the left hand wall was broken in its centre by an adjoining hallway. The corridor was lit weakly by a series of light bulbs dangling from the ceiling-which was in the same if not worse condition as the walls-but the soft illumination was enough for Mireille to see that the passage concluded with a dead end. Meanwhile flickering light came from the intersecting hallway, and an electrical discharge could be heard periodically crackling in sync with it. The blonde assassin could make out no telltale shadows of people standing guard in the corridors, however, nor could she hear any suspicious noises bar the electric sparking and the muffled beat of sordid music, the latter no doubt from the area where the main attractions of the strip club were currently well underway, to the pleasure of its clientele.

Mireille opened the door fully and then flitted inside Slick Chicks, Kirika tailing and shutting the door noiselessly behind them without so much as a click. She treaded carefully forwards, her shoulder almost brushing the left hand wall as she kept her eyes on the hallway junction, sometimes sparing a look at the doors on the opposite wall as she and her partner passed by.

It was all too easy… worryingly so. Mireille had expected a little more security inside Slick Chicks than absolute zero. Still, Millet's gang was relatively petty in size and aptitude, and the Corsican and Kirika did have the element of surprise on their side. Plus it was also a business night; Millet's men were probably out where the club's strippers were, watching over them… or perhaps instead like most of the punters, enjoying their company.

Mireille stopped by the intersection and discreetly poked her head around the corner, checking whether anybody was in the other corridor. Finding no one, she prepared to go on, but caught sight of the label stuck on the door several metres along from the junction in the first hallway: 'Manager'.

Deeming that Millet's office was the best place to start looking for him, Mireille darted across the hallway to it with Kirika following her, the darkhaired assassin planting her back against the wall next to the door, vigilantly keeping an eye out for threats from the neighbouring corridor.

Mireille cracked the office door open the tiniest margin as to reduce the chance of alerting anybody inside, loose flakes of cracked brown paint fluttering to the floor accompanying the prudent action. She then peered through the miniscule gap between the doorjamb and the door, sighting no clear presence of anybody, Millet or otherwise. Taking a risk, she opened the door completely, making sure she did so as slowly as possible to prevent forewarning creaks, and then entered the office.

Millet's office was like any other, albeit a bit cramped and untidy. The only thing that attracted Mireille and Kirika's attention was the expensive leather chair behind the large mahogany desk at the end of the room. The chair was swivelled around so the back was facing them, its occupant apparently oblivious to his dangerous visitors and the pair of pistols being brandished in his direction. By all accounts it appeared as though Mireille and Kirika had found their target, the manager of Slick Chicks; Richard Millet.

Mireille took a silent step forwards, reaching out with her free hand to rotate the chair and Millet around to meet her and Kirika, but then suddenly froze, her instincts screaming. Kirika turned her head slightly to the left as her eyes did likewise, back to the office's open doorway. She felt it too.

Mireille hurled herself at the desk and shoulder-rolled over it, scattering its contents of papers, pens and folders everywhere as automatic gunfire ripped into the office from behind her and her partner. A myriad of bullets traced the woman's path a second after her, pounding holes into the floor and the polished surface of the desk, wood chips and carpet fibres being flung haphazardly into the air. Mireille hit the floor in a crouch behind the sturdy desk's set of drawers, and then stuck her Walther above it and over her head, firing a series of blind shots at her and Kirika's unseen assailant.

The hail of bullets paused for an instant as the shooter took cover, and Mireille quickly took the temporary reprieve to anxiously check on Kirika's whereabouts and condition. She saw that her partner was taking shelter behind a silver file cabinet to her right, the petite girl sitting with her back against the piece of office furniture, looking perfectly composed with her Beretta M1934 at the ready. Kirika's head turned to Mireille and she met the woman's concerned gaze for a moment, silently relaying with her expressive brown eyes that she was all right.

A volley of renewed automatic fire showered the front and side of the cabinet and interrupted Mireille and Kirika's unspoken exchange, bullets sparking off its metal casing and the sounds of incalculable ricochets flooding the room with their sharp, high-pitched cacophony. But Mireille's heart rested easy in her chest; Kirika was fine. Now the Corsican had to worry about the next important matter at hand, that and the one presently saturating her and her partner's position with hot lead.

Several rounds from the gunman struck the leather chair next to Mireille, spinning it around wildly as stuffing burst from its ruptured hide and revealing what the blonde assassin already knew-it was empty. Millet had known she and Kirika were coming, in spite of Mireille's decision to attempt a prompt payback. One of his men had to have been watching them earlier today in the bar, or perhaps even as far back as when they had entered Pigalle-Millet supposedly owed a sizable lump of it, after all. Or maybe the false Noir had somehow aided the small-time gang; that seemed to be more realistic considering the insignificant organisation Mireille and Kirika were dealing with. Ryosuke and Vincent were apparently well-informed about the 'True Noir'. At least they still didn't appear to know where Mireille and Kirika lived, since the pair had yet to be attacked in their apartment.

Thank goodness for small favours, thought Mireille sardonically as more bullets riddled the desk she was hiding behind, their dull and heavy impacts rocking the piece of furniture. A thick wedge of mahogany was suddenly blown off the bottom of the desk and a spray of wood dust stained the ruined carpet next to the blonde as she sighed, ejecting the clip in her pistol to inspect its level. It was blatantly clear that stealth and surprise were out the window and she and Kirika were to face a full on fight.

Mireille smiled grimly. But that was acceptable. The vendetta against Millet could easily be extended to include his entire syndicate as well.

* * *

Kirika looked at Mireille as a torrent of bullets tore into a packed bookshelf, raining bits of paper from the ravaged books down on the woman's blonde head like snowflakes. This was what Kirika had been waiting for, a chance to exercise her purpose in life. A chance to prove her loyalty and dedication to her partner and love. A chance to prove that her tainted existence had been bestowed a noble function at last, after more than a decade of committing grievous wrongs.

[But to protect means to kill….]

Kirika bowed her head. She knew that. But she wouldn't hesitate, not again. Already Mireille was sporting wounds that could have been avoided if Kirika had simply acted. Never. Never again. Mireille would escape this den of sinners without receiving so much as a scratch. Kirika would see to it.

Kirika slowly and resolutely cocked back the hammer of her pistol as a barrage of automatic fire surrounded her, the darkhaired girl holding her weapon securely in both hands. It felt light and warm, as if it were invigorated by its true and worthy purpose… much like its wielder was. She would defend her love utterly from all those who opposed the woman, and no sinner in this world would sully her celestial purity while her guardian lived. After all, who was better suited to protecting an angel of the light than a demon of the darkness; part of it, a sinner herself who knew that malignant bleakness very intimately.

[Sometimes the most effective weapon against the darkness is the darkness itself….]

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Umm… hmm. I don't think I have anything to say this time.


	11. The Test, Act I

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The eleventh chapter.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 11 - The Test, Act I

Ryosuke lit the end of the cigarette held between his lips with his silver lighter, the brief spark of flame dousing the darkly clad hitman's gaunt face in a soft, flickering nimbus of muted orange whilst weakly illuminating the otherwise pitch-black alley around his imposing figure. The assassin snapped his lighter shut, banishing the light back to its prison and plunging his features once more into shadow. He took a long drag on his cigarette, the glowing tip flaring bright in the darkness, a sole pinprick of light in the murk of the night.

Following numerous detours to a variety of locales, ranging from a low-class eatery to a rowdy pub, Ryosuke and Vin had eventually tailed their young spy to this address, a secluded alleyway in a dilapidated part of Paris, the district an obvious hub for gang-related activity. Not that the two 'tourists' had been even remotely perturbed about venturing into an area of potentially heavy crime; Ryosuke sincerely doubted whether France's ganglands-or even the deepest tiers of their underworld, for that matter-could come close to matching the peril of Japan's. The syndicates in this country were weak, petty, too involved with lining their pockets than anything else. There was no sense of camaraderie linking each member in bonds stronger than financial gain, stronger than *steel*, there was no sense of brotherhood-no sense of family. It was a failing that infected many of the West's illegal 'organisations', if they could even be called that. If there ever came a time when one of Asia's criminal consortiums decided to genuinely expand full scale into-or perhaps more accurately, invade-Europe's underworld the continent's criminal groups would quickly learn how a *true* syndicate operates… before they were all slaughtered like the wretched vermin they are.

Ryosuke blew smoke from his nostrils into the cold night air, his merciless violet hued eyes narrowing. Or at least all would be destroyed but one, single, and arguably most influential group that had ever been assembled throughout history. Soldats had been secretly given birth to in Europe, centuries ago back in the dark ages, and had then spread like a plague across the globe with the passing of the years until present, growing infuriatingly stronger and stronger the further it expanded. And still to this day the clandestine society maintained its power and mystique, its followers covertly manipulating people's lives by whatever whim took them, like mere pieces on a chessboard to be moved and positioned as they wished... and sacrificed as they wished. Ryosuke knew from bitter experience how Soldats thought nothing of snuffing out anybody's existence, regardless of who they were or what the motives were to supposedly warrant execution. It was only fitting that he treated members of the organisation with equal callous indifference.

But tonight Soldats, Ryosuke's favoured foe, was not the quarry he and his partner were hunting. Not every antagonist that crossed one's path could be worthy prey.

Ryosuke turned his eyes to Vin, where the shorter man was leaning against the alley's rundown wall opposite him with his arms folded. The sun had fallen well below the horizon during their circumspect pursuit of their stalker, and that coupled with the distinct absence of light in the narrow passage made Vin blend into the deep shadows most effectively; he was barely visible in his black suit, shirt and tie, much like Ryosuke himself was significantly shrouded in his long ebony coat. But camouflage for after dusk had not been the reason why the triad member had donned the dark garb before leaving the boarding house. Vin had an eccentricity of habitually clothing himself in black, the shade of Death, whenever there was a possibility he would be taking a life. Ryosuke had never bothered to inquire to the why behind his partner's odd practice, not being especially interested what the black-haired man's motivation was, but he had made a few idle conjectures on the rare occasions when there had been nothing better to occupy his thoughts with. He presumed Vin saw himself as some sort of mortician-he had certainly put enough people in coffins to be qualified as one- although perhaps not as the kind society looked approvingly on, or maybe even as Death itself, the Grim Reaper. However, Ryosuke doubted if Vin possessed the level of arrogance to give credence to the latter. Death's servant, perhaps, but certainly not the figure of Death itself. No, delusions of grandeur akin to that level were reserved for fools who believed their abilities in murder were above and beyond all others, fools who viewed themselves as untouchable by the Reaper. Fools of the like who dubbed themselves Noir, Ryosuke thought with irritation. No matter how skilled one was, all it took to end it was a single bullet or well-placed blade. And one's title mattered even less, especially when one was in their grave.

"How long are we just going to wait out here?" Vin complained crabbily, but with the pitch of his voice prudently kept whisper quiet. He turned his head in the direction of the unmarked door a short ways to his right, a door where their inept watcher had passed through into places unknown several moments earlier. There was a sign posted above the weather-beaten door, but it was so soiled with dirt that whatever it said was incomprehensible. However, with a back alley door as the apparent main entrance, the building Ryosuke and Vin were loitering outside of was quite likely home to some sort of shady marketplace where underhanded dealings were conducted for illicit wares. In other words, it was probably a 'business' to fence goods of dubious origin.

Ryosuke ignored his partner's characteristic grousing, instead taking another puff on his cigarette in answer and filling his lungs with smoke. He knew that Vin understood why they were choosing to wait a moment or two instead of simply charging into the building the instant their teenage spy had disappeared inside-the triad member merely wanted to see some action. But it was best to let one's prey assume that they were in the clear and consequently permit them to relax themselves in their perceived security before breaking down the door and proving them disastrously wrong. Catching one's enemy off their guard was always an advantage one should strive to achieve. It was one of the most rudimentary principles of following the way of the assassin.

Once the length of his cigarette had shrunk until nearly the filter was the lone part remaining, Ryosuke plucked it from his lips and let it drop to the ground. Reaching inside his coat, he took out a pair of black gloves-his own eccentricity before murder-and pulled them on with a little difficulty. But their tough inflexibility was a tolerable nuisance when weighed against the benefits they conferred to their wearer.

The tall assassin clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles cracking against the virtually unyielding material enclosing them. Ryosuke and Vin had come this far after their spy; they may as well see it through properly to its conclusion. Besides, who knew whom the snooping boy was working for… he was a loose end that should be tied. And if the two hitmen had to leave behind a few bodies at room temperature in Paris before they returned to Yokohama, so be it.

Ryosuke's gaze flicked meaningfully to Vin, who smirked gleefully, and then with a long stride, he walked towards the door.

* * *

"Just thought it best to give you the heads up about what's going on down here," Jean Vasser-or 'Ezza', as was his idiotic alias for this particular posting-spoke softly into the mouthpiece of his mobile phone while checking reflexively over his shoulder at the closed door behind him, fearing it would open at any second. One of Simon's acquaintances-or 'ferrets', as Jean liked to contemptuously dub them-had just arrived at the computer store a few minutes ago and was now downstairs in the basement with the moronic hacker, doubtless trying to sell the knowledge he had garnered about Sakamoto and Zhenmeng… for the second time this week. It was astounding that the ferret had even discovered the accommodations of the marked men-Simon's 'network' of informants were little more than kids prying heedlessly into people's affairs-yet Simon, being the cheapskate that he was, instead persisted in arguing with the snitch over the price of the information. For all of his evident adoration of Bouquet, the guy's first love was definitely money. Jean prayed that he would just pay whatever fee the ferret hankered for this time; the faster Simon learned of Sakamoto and Zhenmeng's location, the faster Soldats could assassinate them… and the faster Jean would be transferred from this god-awful assignment.

Breffort merely grunted his approval on the other end of the line, and then ended the call. Jean exhaled slowly and lowered his phone, before wiping the sheen of sweat from his brow with a forearm. He still wasn't used to talking to such a high-ranking Soldats official. Jean had been inducted into the order a scant year ago, and after a several months of being shuffled from one meaningless assignment to another, he had eventually been stuck in a field position of relative unimportance along with an idiotic codename; Ezza, the timid and scruffy assistant to an inconsequential computer 'criminal' known to now and then affiliate himself with some minor felons in the city. But at least it *was* a field position… although at the time Jean had felt that that was a small condolence.

A couple of months following his placement in Simon's mouldy computer store, Jean had received a communiqué from his immediate superiors-who weren't very 'superior' at all in the Soldats hierarchy-to be on the look out for two young women. Pictures of the sought after duo had accompanied the message, but no mention behind the reasons why he had to look out for them, or what even their names were had been included. Despite this, Jean had learned later through the grapevine that numerous Soldats agents in the field who had infiltrated places where information was traded as a commodity had been relayed the same instructions and data-clearly the higher-ups had wanted an operative to be situated close to the women… without said operative knowing who exactly they were watching, as was typical Soldats methods. But it had been obvious to Jean that the two women had to be of sizeable importance to merit such treatment.

He hadn't predicted that the wanted pair made use of Simon Pierpont's talents, however, and now suddenly Jean had been thrust into a position of the utmost value in Soldats' eyes. Most of his days before this abrupt turnaround had been spent miserably maintaining the façade of a sullen teenager obsessed with comics and using as little deodorant as possible, so when the hunted duo had wandered into Simon's shop about a fortnight ago the Soldats underling had almost swallowed his tongue in shock. The two young women hadn't looked like much and had made an unusual pair at first glance-the blonde had been cold and imposing, her partner meek and waiflike-but there had been something about them. It had been subtle, like an intangible aura perhaps, yet it had silently screamed with conviction that they were two people who were *not* to be messed with. Needless to say, Jean had felt considerably intimidated while in their presence.

Following his encounter with the two, Jean had pried-quite resentfully-from Simon that the older, beautiful woman's name was Mireille Bouquet-the 'babe' destined to become the hacker's 'squeeze' any day now, apparently. He hadn't known her Asian friend's identity, however, and it still remained a mystery to date. Jean had then quickly contacted his superiors to give them the news along with the limited data about Bouquet he had wrung from Simon, hoping the additional intel would place him in their good graces… and hoping that as a result he would be transferred to a field position where he could at least be allowed to shower once a day without threatening to ruin his cover.

Yet after spilling his guts to his betters, to Jean's great surprise-and likewise trepidation-he had been put under the direct command of a man called Remy Breffort, someone he knew sat high on the Soldats council, and further emphasising that Bouquet and her companion were individuals who meant a great deal to the secret society. Breffort had ordered Jean to report straight to him from then on, desiring to know all of what Bouquet asked of Simon, as well as any resulting information the computer expert gave her. It may have not been a transfer, but working directly for a Soldats council member had benefits-and not to mention prestige… if he was permitted to actually *tell* anybody about his employer-all of its own. Jean was sure that if he pleased Breffort in his performance on the Bouquet assignment, it would be in his favour-maybe he would get that field transfer he yearned for. Hell, maybe Breffort would even keep him under his wing. Permanently being in the service of a Soldats councilman would be a terrific career move.

Breffort had furthermore enlightened Jean of two other people to look out for whom Soldats were also hunting in Paris, albeit for seemingly very different reasons; Kei Sakomoto and Desmond Zhenmeng, a pair of Asian men marked for death who Bouquet and her partner turned out to be seeking as well. Once again, Jean didn't know why the men had to be killed, but his place was not to question, just to obey. True, it was all very intriguing, and the Soldats subordinate had his theories of what linked all the players together in this plot, but he severely doubted whether he would ever get the opportunity to test the validity of them-he did not possess a station that allowed him privileged information beyond that which he needed to know to perform his appointed tasks. But it didn't really matter; Jean's only goal for the moment was to escape this hellish posting and get as far away from Simon as possible-if he had to listen to one more mindless lecture about the dynamics of main characters in video games his sanity was just going to snap. Once again he prayed that Simon's ferret would this time divulge the location of Sakamoto and Zhenmeng to the hacker, then everybody would be happy; Bouquet and her friend for getting the intel they paid for, Simon for pleasing Bouquet and receiving the payment, Breffort for ultimately learning the wanted men's place of residence from Jean, and finally Jean himself for moving another step closer to freedom.

Jean looked nervously over his shoulder at the basement door again as he stuffed his phone into one of his baggy cargo pants' pockets, before wiping his sweaty palms on the legs. He jerked in surprise and turned his head sharply in the direction of the computer store's entrance as it suddenly creaked open, an unexpected event for this time of night. Nearly all of Simon's customers preferred to visit the hacker in the late afternoon, since it was around then that they managed to drag themselves out of bed. Jean would have locked the door and shut up shop by now too if Simon's ferret hadn't rolled up grubbing for Euros.

"Whoa, I think we just step in a time warp!"

Jean's thoughts were all brought to an immediate standstill in his mind, like the surface of a lake suddenly iced over in an instant, flash frozen by the unnatural chill only stark terror could produce. Sakamoto and Zhenmeng, the men Soldats wanted dead… they were here, in the store, right before Jean's panic-stricken eyes.

Zhenmeng strolled up to the front counter-to the rear of which Jean stood like statue-the handsome Asian man's hands in his dark pants' pockets and his gait casual, while his head turned this way and that around the computer shop's interior, exaggeratedly browsing the pretend wares as if he were simply an interested customer. His partner, Sakamoto, walked in behind him and was even creepier in person than in his photocopied picture Bouquet had imparted to Simon, six foot tall and decked out in the blackest black, with pure white hair framing a thin face of almost equal pallor; the Angel of Death personified. Zhenmeng was similarly garbed in absolute black, his amber gaze and flawless skin standing out in contrast with his clothes. Contrary to his outfit, his eyes danced with mischief and he was grinning playfully, but there was something beneath the look and the smile, a shadow of the expression a young boy would have as he pulled the wings off a fly for his own morbid entertainment. If Sakamoto was the Angel of Death, then Zhenmeng was the manic imp perched on his shoulder, cackling wickedly.

Zhenmeng abruptly slapped his hands hard on the counter and left them there, the noise sounding unnaturally loud in the store empty save for Jean and the two menacing men, and startling the Soldats follower out of his petrified condition. Zhenmeng then leaned across the counter, supporting himself on his arms, while his creepy eyes flicked from right to left, feigning another look over the shop's 'merchandise' before they fixed squarely on the suddenly profusely sweating Jean.

"We are looking for shittiest PC Euro can buy," Zhenmeng said in broken French, his grin becoming lopsided yet still no friendlier than before, "and I guess came to right place, huh?" He looked over his shoulder, back at the shelves and tables laden with very old computer parts. "I did not believe any this crap existed anymore!"

He then turned back to Jean, his smile fading until only the corners of his mouth curled upwards slightly in a mere hint of one, while his eyes narrowed just a small amount, his visage moving closer to being openly threatening. "But think we going to have to see something in back," Zhenmeng said with barely veiled demand, his gaze shifting to the basement door meaningfully. "You *can* help us, right…?" he added, drawling the last word as his eyes returned to Jean, boring into the Soldats underling's own, frightened, orbs. Zhenmeng reached one hand inside his black suit jacket, partially pulling out a handgun from a holster resting against his side, revealing enough of the weapon for Jean to understand that his request was not really a request-it was an order. And unfortunately his poor command of the French language did little to reduce the fearful effect his insinuation implied; in some ways it made the man sound all the more malevolent. Meanwhile Sakamoto positioned himself beside his partner, the imposing figure providing further incentive for Jean to cooperate without the slightest resistance.

Jean swallowed-hard. In the face of such opposition there wasn't much he could do or say. That was, without being hurt or worse, killed. One thing was sure, however; Simon's ferret wasn't really needed anymore.

* * *

Kirika turned her head away from her cocked pistol and to her left, watching through resolute eyes as Mireille's position behind the desk was pelted with bullets, the already severely damaged piece of furniture taking even more of a beating. The desk was on its last legs, literally, one side of it having been smashed to splinters under the assault from the shooter, with its integrity giving way and as a result causing it to slope downwards towards Kirika, where she sought refuge to the rear of a solid filing cabinet. Although pinned to a level such that she could hardly return fire without risking lethal perforation, Mireille was still relatively safe behind the other side of the desk, using the thick and deep set of drawers as cover. But her shelter was falling apart all around her at this very second and wouldn't survive much more of a pounding than it already had sustained.

Not that it had to. Kirika had been biding her time for this precise moment, consciously suppressing her sense of anxiousness at her partner's perilous plight to prevent herself from acting rashly and forfeiting her advantage… although there was a limit to her 'apathy'-but who could merely sit idly by and watch the person they love be in immediate jeopardy? But the girl now no longer had to hold herself back and curb her natural protective urges. The gangster currently spraying Millet's office with automatic fire was directing his shots solely on Mireille's half of the room, leaving the darkhaired assassin free to retaliate when her older counterpart could not. And it was Kirika's place to act when her love could not, to be the woman's strength when she was weak. That oath related to all manner of things in their lives together, be it in peaceful, everyday affairs or in the heat of combat. It was an oath Kirika had sworn to live by.

Kirika whirled around in her crouch and leaned slightly out from behind the filing cabinet, bringing her Beretta instantly to bear in her right hand at the point where she estimated the goon's head height to be. She caught a glimpse of a man holding a quivering Heckler and Koch MP53 submachine gun in his hands standing in the office doorway, the end of its barrel blazing hotly. A stream of bullet casings flew out constantly from the loud weapon, its wielder grinning maliciously as he assailed Mireille's location with round after round of lead. But Kirika's glimpse of the gangster was a short one. She squeezed the trigger of her silenced gun almost immediately after she had strayed from cover, her shot not even a whisper in the roar of her target's countless own, yet infinitely more effective. The man's right temple erupted in scarlet, and he took a tottering step backwards before collapsing into the hallway outside the office, his MP53-and his heart-stilled.

There was not a second to spare. Unless Kirika and Mireille wanted to be pinned down again, they had to move *now*.

Kirika bolted for the now vacant doorway, staying low as she flitted across the office's bullet-ravaged carpet, her Beretta aimed ahead of her. Out of the corner of her eye she sighted Mireille vaulting nimbly over the remains of the desk with one hand, the woman's coat billowing out behind her as she mimicked her partner's example and sallied forth. Kirika had known she would. She and the blonde were on the same wavelength-they were two halves of a whole, complementing one another in thought and action instinctively as if they had been doing it since birth. It hadn't always been this way, true, and not but a day ago Kirika had believed their harmony to have been lost in tandem with their shared affection. In the months after their first meeting, the two young women's reliance on each other-their *trust* in each other-had built slowly as the love blossomed between them, the two separate yet closely connected sentiments only truly peaking near the pinnacle of their pilgrimage to the past together. Kirika and Mireille's unparalleled abilities were owed to their confidence in each other, and in turn that confidence was owed to their love for each other. It was what made them strong; strong enough to have faced and conquered Altena's trials as their difficultly forever mounted, strong enough to take on the woman's entire Soldats enclave and survive, and on Mireille's part, strong enough to forgive what by all rights should be unforgivable. It was what had made them strong enough to be the rightly named Noir.

And now they were still strong, stronger than ever… because their love was still strong. Kirika and Mireille's feelings had seemed to waver before, but in reality it had simply been a misunderstanding, a falsehood that had merely temporarily disrupted their balance; the balance between dark and light, sinner and saint, demon and angel-the best of both worlds working in perfect unity to form an unstoppable partnership. In short, Kirika and Mireille were *one*.

A second gangster suddenly appeared in the office's doorway in an effort to maintain the grip on his dead companion's vital spot, but before he could even get off a shot from his pistol two 9mm bullets struck him at the exact same time, the pair of red splotches appearing on either side of his chest. He howled in pain and clutched futilely at his mortal wounds with his free hand, staggering backwards until he met the corridor's wall. He slid down it slowly, his pain-wracked expression evaporating the further he dropped as the life left him. By the time the gangster's rear had touched the floor his facial features had relaxed completely-the shroud of death had enveloped him.

Kirika and Mireille each threw their backs against either side of the doorway, their guns held upright and at the ready. Tendrils of smoke coiled to the ceiling from the silenced barrels of the two assassins' respective pistols after their mutual discharge, almost in sync with one another. Kirika looked at her partner as Mireille did likewise, brown eyes steadfastly meeting blue. She then nodded firmly to the blonde, letting her know that she was set to proceed. Not a single word was shared between the pair to voice and confirm their joint offensive strategy, but in their case, none were needed.

The exchange lasted only the briefest of moments, neither assassin wishing to lose the momentum of their counter strike. Immediately following her nod, Kirika suddenly bolted out into the hallway, stooped over and with her Beretta directed down the right hand length of the corridor. In flawless coordination with her partner, Mireille sidestepped halfway out of the office at the precise instance the girl moved, her own handgun aimed above Kirika's low, scampering form passing in front of her as the blonde set her own sights down the left span of the corridor.

It was a basic plan of attack for two people facing an unknown number of adversaries in the close confines of the upper-middle part of the 'T' in a generic T-junction, one established mainly on common sense than any complex combat tactics-one person took the right hand side of the passage, while the other took the left, eliminating any hostiles as fast as they could while in turn guarding each others' back. But for Kirika and Mireille it *wasn't* a plan per se, it was primarily steeped in instinct alone. Neither thought about what manoeuvres to take or what position to situate themselves in, they simply did it. Kirika had taken the right and placed herself in the most exposed, dangerous arrangement seemingly unthinkingly because in her subconscious she was aware that with her smaller frame she would make a trickier target for the enemy's sights to find, plus she was faster on her feet and more limber than her partner. The girl's intuitive choice left Mireille with the less vulnerable spot, the blonde's taller body partially shielded by the office's doorway. Additionally, the woman's height advantage permitted her to start firing upon their adversaries immediately when Kirika moved, the diminutive girl ducking under the shots-in this life where death could come all too readily without warning, every second was valuable. Kirika's mind had unconsciously evaluated each and every factor before the assassin herself had moved, including considering what Mireille's instinctive impulses would be. And all of her deliberations had occurred in the period of a heartbeat. Trust and love; they were a powerful combination.

As Kirika's line of sight cleared the office's doorjamb, her eyes registered three men armed with pistols dwelling in her designated section of hallway, all of who looked taken off guard. Her sharp mind processed this information in the tiniest fraction of a second, modifying her aim to compensate for it, before she let loose at the targets accurately and fatally with her gun. The darkhaired girl strafed across the hallway from the entrance to Millet's office to the wall opposite-agilely skirting the corpse of the H&K MP53 wielding man she had killed beforehand-her attention wholly devoted to her part of the corridor as she took down one gangster with two shots to the stomach, followed by a second with a single round to the chest. When she felt her left shoulder hit the wall she ceased her strafing run and dropped lower into full crouch, firing twice more from her now stationary position at her third and final foe, catching the man the same number of times in the head and sending him sprawling backwards to pile on top of his deceased associates in a muddle of tangled limbs.

As the slide of Kirika's empty Beretta M1934 snapped back, a stray bullet originating from her rear impacted the region of wall a handful of inches above her head, making a slight graze in the concrete surface, a white line on a grey plane. A moment later a second wayward slug buried into the dead flesh of the gangster slumped against the wall just behind Kirika, jerking the body so that it nudged against her. In spite of these near misses, the girl didn't flinch nor did alarm start to bubble up in her breast-she knew for absolute certain that Mireille would not allow her to get hit, just as she had not allowed the blonde to be hit by any of the adversaries she had faced.

During her assault the girl had been aware of Mireille's Walther P99 sounding out repeatedly in a timbre slightly deeper than her own even when hushed with a silencer, eradicating the other enemies in the left portion of hallway and joining Kirika's instrument in performing their duet. And it *was* a duet. Kirika and Mireille were not only assassins skilled in their trade, but proficient artists putting on a play, a fluid-if macabre-opera, like the ones the blonde had once taken her young partner to see in days gone by to 'culture' her. Yet of course, there was nothing make-believe about this play; there were no actors, and the there was no singing either, only the agonised cries of genuine pain. Here, this play was one of life and death, where each time Kirika and Mireille pulled the trigger of their guns and hence sounded a chord of their instruments, its reverberation potentially spelled doom for somebody's future existence. And when they danced, they dodged bullets; they dodged Death… or delivered it. The song the pair of assassins played, the steps they danced; it was a funeral dirge they performed, a requiem. Kirika and Mireille were a duet of Death, and they executed their drama-or was that tragedy?-with consummate aptitude and unmatched harmony.

With her immediate foes taken care of Kirika sprung from her crouch to her full height and spun adroitly around on the balls of her feet to face Mireille's section of hallway, ejecting the spent clip from her Beretta as she swiftly rose before pulling out a fresh one in her turning motion. As she slammed the new magazine into her pistol, she glimpsed a gangster crumpling to the floor ahead of her with a weak groan, his bloodstained white shirt a clear giveaway to the root of his pains. The man's body wasn't the only carcass littering the concrete corridor in front of Kirika's eyes, but it was the latest, Mireille having just finished dealing with her own allotment of enemies, a mere moment behind her partner.

Before the goon had even collapsed completely to the floor, Kirika was sprinting directly forwards to the hallway's intersection, her footfalls zigzagging in between the web of lifeless limbs of the departed spread across her route. The assassin heard Mireille's footsteps echo after hers a second later, putting about a metre and a half separating them-seamless precision. With the junction almost upon her, Kirika tugged back the slide of her Beretta, chambering a round an instant before she launched herself forcefully off her right foot, diving elegantly across the opening of the intersection; a graceful dancer executing her closing steps with the utmost finesse. As her body soared by the junction, she fired a trio of bullets at the three men who were running down the other hallway towards her, no doubt in a vain attempt to aid their outmatched-and already dead-friends. Kirika saw all the men jerk spasmodically, but if it was due to being shot or simply in surprise, she couldn't tell.

Kirika flew past the intersection, her left shoulder striking the floor. She tucked in her legs and arms and bowed her head at the contact, rolling more than one hundred and eighty degrees completely over the tops of her shoulders and back before her feet touched the floor. The assassin then extended her legs a little and tightened their muscles, the soles of her shoes scaping across the hard floor a couple of inches until she came to a full stop, her partially stretched legs acting as counters to her momentum.

Her flight and landing over, Kirika leapt to a standing position and scurried the couple of feet back to the corner of the T-junction, opposite to the corner where Mireille was leaning out from, firing her Walther down the neighbouring corridor at anybody whom the petite girl had missed or failed to kill outright-the reason why the blonde had lingered somewhat behind Kirika. By the time Kirika peered around the corner, all that greeted her were three dead men. The first steps of her and Mireille's dance, the opening 'act' of their play, had concluded… all in a handful of seconds. And they had performed impeccably. But for their opponents, there would be no encore.

Suddenly, the door at the far end of the corridor burst open, releasing the previously restrained notes of odd, capricious music from its confines, as well as a hail of lead that spewed into the area, forcing Kirika and Mireille to duck back around their respective corners, into cover. Bullets saturated the walls, the sound of them discharging and bouncing off stone, crumbling it into powder, and the sight of small plumes of white dust rising into the air filling the corridor ahead.

Kirika looked across the intersection at Mireille as automatic fire blazed past them, the blonde woman taking advantage of this respite to change clips in her gun. And a respite it was; they were in a stalemate scenario… or at least what appeared to be one. Neither they nor the gangster in the doorway at the end of the hall had the upper hand, both parties more or less in the same arrangements, except for the goon equipped with the superior firepower… and Kirika and Mireille equipped with the superior expertise, which made all the difference between stalemate and simple obstacle. When weighed against raw skill, armaments didn't count for very much at all. A firearm was just a tool like any other, after all.

The barrage of suppressing fire ceased, the gangster reloading, and Mireille smiled faintly at Kirika, the girl giving a small smile of her own in answer. The play must go on; it was time for the second 'act'.

The pair abruptly dashed from shelter and down the corridor, their pistols directed straight ahead of them. The gangster armed with an Ingram Mac-10 Uzi submachine gun reappeared in the doorway, barring the course forward, with his ammunition supply apparently restocked. His eyes widened at the sight of Kirika and Mireille bearing rapidly down on him and he squeezed hard on the trigger of his weapon spontaneously, in the same instant the two assassins pulled the triggers of their own guns. The man's body twitched and shuddered as it was riddled with bullets, his aim moving wildly all over the place as he was shaken like a puppet by its strings. A volley of lead from his Uzi was spread everywhere as he mechanically kept the trigger of his submachine gun depressed, many of the shots coming dangerously close to hitting Kirika and Mireille. But Kirika wasn't afraid, and she didn't believe Mireille was either. Firearms of the gangster's type were notoriously inaccurate even at the best of times, and with his undisciplined aim and sustained spurt of fire, the chances of actually striking someone or something he was targeting were very low. Still, Kirika wasn't about to take that chance when Mireille's safety was involved; the girl shifted the sights of her Beretta a tad to the right, and deftly shot the Mac-10 out of the goon's grasp, disarming him.

The assassins continued firing upon the gangster as they tore down the corridor, the ill-fated man held upright on his feet by the torrent of slugs ripping into his ravaged body, his torso now a mass of red. His face was slack and his mouth hung open, with his eyes rolled back into his head; he was already dead, simply waiting to be allowed to fall to floor and escape this parody of life. But Kirika and Mireille had a purpose for him; there was still a use his body yet possessed-they weren't merely wasting ammunition.

Kirika and Mireille breached the doorway a split second later and charged into the erect remains of their foe, hunching over and barging their shoulders violently into his middle. They hurtled into the room ahead, propelling the dead goon forwards along with them, and were greeted with an enormous bombardment of fire; a dense mixture of automatic, semi-automatic and single-shot. The assassins' improvised shield took the burnt of the assault, the gangster's already battered body being punished further still, reduced to a bag of flesh stuffed with bullets.

However, both Kirika and Mireille knew that the mutilated corpse wouldn't be able to withstand such abuse for long, and after a couple of seconds-the young women a scarce metre beyond the threshold of the doorway-they peeled away from their human shield.

Mireille hurled herself to the right, behind a wide bar fortunately only a few feet from her original location, escaping the onslaught of fire with relative ease. Conversely, Kirika had less luck. The girl had no alternative but to go left, tumbling recklessly across the open floor as gunfire chased after her, her dizzying-though deliberate-momentum addling her senses and causing her surroundings to spin madly. After what seemed like an eternity, Kirika at last crashed into something solid which-somewhat painfully-halted her controlled roll, and when the world had stopped whirling long enough for her to discern her whereabouts, she realised that she had ended up crouched under a round table of dark wood, its top covered by black vinyl. Two chairs lay dishevelled nearby where she had evidently bowled them over, and past them by the bar Mireille had jumped behind she spotted the bullet-ridden body of the man she and the blonde had used as a screen. He lay on his back in a large-and still growing-pool of blood, barely recognisable as a man anymore but more as a mess of tissue, with his clothes in tatters from the countless rounds that had been pumped into him, and also soggy from the bodily fluids that had spilled out from his ruptured skin and muscle to soak them. Kirika took in the spectacle emotionlessly, before dismissing it outright from her mind. The man was just another dead enemy, albeit one severely disfigured, but still nothing she hadn't seen before. She was indifferent.

[Merely another dead sinner, yes, what all sinners idyllically should eventually become….]

Kirika shook her head slightly and shooed away the errant thought, wondering if she was still a little light-headed from her tumble. Now was not the time for such musings; she could not allow herself to become distracted while in combat, not while fulfilling her cherished vow.

"Hold your fire!" a male authoritarian voice hollered above the din of gunfire that was still liberally digging pockmarks all over the floor and wall near the doorway to the corridor Kirika and Mireille had just stampeded through. The shooting ebbed somewhat with the man's command, but didn't cease entirely, prompting him to shout louder and more forcefully. "I said hold your fire, you useless bastards!" he yelled furiously. "You're blasting the hell outta my club! And someone shut that crap off too, while you're at it!

After a couple of seconds the gunfire petered out virtually completely, only the stray shot or two from a pistol enduring, which soon also stopped. The music that had been playing in the big room died away also, producing a noticeably deep silence to replace it and the gunfire, a silence that seemed somehow doubly quieter following the clamour seconds before it. But that silence didn't last for long.

"That's better," the man's voice spoke again in a softer tone, his words echoing slightly. He then cleared his throat. "I hope you enjoyed my little… welcome," he called in a louder voice, and in a pitch that for some reason sounded mocking to Kirika's ears. "It cost me my damn office, you know!" he added heatedly, before pausing for a moment. "Ah well," the man then continued in a calmer tone, "I guess I can always take the cost out of your two *fine* hides, now, can't I? Hmm, now there's a thought. What do you say? Why don't you both just give up and work for me? I'm sure the Johns would pay whatever I charge to spend some *quality* time with either of you! One a blonde bombshell, the other still only a girl-mmm, what a combo!" He chuckled then, a hoarse laughter that reverberated around the room and made Kirika feel sort of queasy. "Come on, let's stop this unnecessary violence and talk business instead. After all, it's just business between us. Sure, you killed some of my boys, but being the generous soul that I am I say let bygones be bygones." He fell quiet then, but after neither Kirika nor Mireille spoke up, he went on, apparently undeterred. Kirika pondered the possibility that perhaps he liked listening to the sound of his own voice.

"Okay, have it your way," the man said with seeming great regret, although Kirika didn't really believe him. "I guess it doesn't matter. You know, I wasn't truly expecting you two to show up so soon, or at all in fact-I didn't believe you would have the *gall* to challenge *me* in my own territory. But lo, here you both are, drawn into my brilliant trap like mice to cheese… or perhaps like kittens to cream would be a more appropriate analogy, hmm? Hah!"

Kirika wasn't in actual fact paying much interest to the man's spiel-a mere fraction of her mind was allocated to digesting his words and searching through them for anything important-and hadn't been since his first three sentences. While he had been wasting time talking, the girl had been making worthwhile use of that time to reload her Beretta and carefully study her surroundings from her vantage point under the table. She and Mireille were in some sort of low-lighted barroom, except one outfitted with a peculiar stage of some sort, encircled by chairs and small round tables like the one she was dwelling under. The stage was semicircular and had a catwalk extending out from its centre, with the entire structure coloured in red, along with the curtains. A golden railing-which Kirika surmised to be made of brass-rimmed the entire stage including the catwalk. Poles of about two and a half metres in length of the same style and substance stood vertically erect intermittently on the stage, and also down the middle of the catwalk, yet seemingly served no purpose other than for show.

The bar Mireille was hiding behind was to the stage's right and ran straight along the wall. It was constructed of thick, glossy wood with stools in front of it and stacks of bottles on several shelves behind it, and was probably the most defensive location in the room-Kirika was grateful that her love had managed to secure it. From her current spot her angle of the bar didn't provide a view of Mireille, but simply being aware that the woman was in the safest position made the girl feel better. Still, in the event the bar were to be somehow overrun then Mireille could be placed in extreme peril; there wasn't an easy way to retreat from there without leaving one's self wide open to attack. Just because her partner had good cover didn't mean Kirika could become relaxed in regarding her pledge to protect the woman.

Kirika herself was in a field of tables and chairs down from the stage and bar, with several red leather booth seats lining the walls. In respect to defensive capabilities the tables offered limited protection; they could be likely shot to pieces relatively effortlessly. The diminutive assassin would have to remain fast on her feet while constantly moving to prevent being wounded in the coming conflict.

Peeking out surreptitiously from under the table, Kirika observed that the talkative speaker addressing her and Mireille was-as she had suspected-none other than her and partner's target, Richard Millet; the girl recognised him from the photograph she had seen of the man back at the apartment. The leader of the gangsters was standing on a rickety-looking gantry hanging from the ceiling above the far end of the stage. It ran from one side of the stage to the other, its ends concealed by deep red curtains. Large spotlights were affixed to the topmost handrail of the gantry, while wooden panels had been fitted against the front railings, likely in an endeavour to create a makeshift barricade. Millet was armed with a Herstal FN P90 submachine gun that he waved around in his right hand as he talked, and accompanying him were three men, two of which who wielded simple bolt-action rifles, and a third wearing black sunglasses despite being indoors, who strangely bore no weapon at all. As Kirika watched on, the goon in the sunglasses whispered something into Millet's right ear while sparing uneasy glances into the expanse of the barroom below him. After receiving a nod from Millet, the gangster then jogged along the gantry to the left, the structure wobbling precariously with his every footstep, before he disappeared behind one of the stage's curtains.

Kirika looked to her left, peering through the mass of table and chair legs to check the locations of her and Mireille's other adversaries. She could make out at least five pairs of human legs in the midst of the metal kind not a great distance away from her, their arsenal consisting of small arms such as semi-automatic pistols and the occasional revolver. Past them, Kirika sighted a second group of gangsters situated behind the stage's catwalk on its left side, with one of the men brandishing an Avtomat Kalashnikov SU-74 submachine gun, a weapon that could prove to be troublesome if left to have free reign-he would have to be put down quickly if possible. Yet another cluster of men were lurking on the stage amid the curtains, Millet's gantry swaying over their heads. There was very little cover in that particular locale but for the curtains, however, and despite the fabric's seeming heaviness they would do little to stop a bullet. Those gangsters would no doubt be among the first to accept the sting of Mireille's Walther-she was in a prime position to slay them all.

Kirika noticed not a single customer in the room, but with the previous firefight not arousing panicked screams or a swarm of fleeing people, that much had been anticipated. It was perfectly clear now that the music playing as normal and the lack of guards in the hallways earlier had all been part of Millet's ploy to lure her and Mireille inside the building under the impression of facing only light resistance. However, this resistance was anything but light… in principle. To experienced assassins like Kirika and her partner, Millet and his men were nothing they hadn't coped with before… and defeated. The duo were outnumbered, they were outgunned, but they were *not* outclassed. And Kirika was positive none of Millet's syndicate had love and trust on their side.

"Well, my men grow restless. And if you're not willing to even talk to me…."

Suddenly the spotlights on the gantry switched on and were swivelled around by Millet's escort to focus on Kirika and Mireille's positions; one beam of bright white light on the small table the girl was under, and a second on the bar the blonde was behind. It appeared it was time to dance once again. But Kirika was prepared; she was prepared for absolutely anything. She'd had that feeling ever since she had stepped into the alleyway outside Millet's headquarters. The sentiment she had was reminiscent of the one that had instilled her when she had fought Altena's Soldats division at the Manor months ago, determined to face whatever may come, no matter what. She had believed back then that with Mireille by her side she could do anything, defeat anyone, regardless of how daunting the feat or formidable the foe. Kirika had simply felt like she could *fight*. And now, once more, the darkhaired girl had harnessed that resolve. Perhaps its roots in the past were the same as now-her fervent desire to honour her promise to look after Mireille. It certainly could be possible. While she was supposed to be her love's strength, Kirika understood that Mireille had gifted her with a strength, too-the strength to *be* the woman's strength. It was little strange how that worked… the girl wondered if there was a term for such a circumstance.

"I think we should get this show on the road," Millet said menacingly.

Kirika couldn't agree more. It was time to bring this play-this love story-to its climax… and its inevitable conclusion.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

I considered whether or not I could use the 'duet' analogy from Kirika's POV, but decided that if Mireille had taken her to the opera (an opera with acting) and explained it to her, then it would be okay. Geez, Kirika can be tricky to write for sometimes! I have to keep remembering to make her oblivious to things.


	12. The Test, Act II

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twelfth chapter. Oh, for those of you who didn't already realise this in the previous chapter, Sakamoto and Zhenmeng are the aliases Ryosuke and Vincent are using while in Paris, and what Simon and Jean (Ezza) know them as.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 12 - The Test, Act II

"Whoowee," Zhenmeng whistled sardonically, "what cosy little hole in ground you have here!" He trudged with apparent fearlessness down the stairs leading into the basement with loud, heavy steps; the dull clomping thuds echoing around the gloomy room to warn its two occupants of his and his companion's imminent-and portentous-arrival. But of course, there was nothing for him to be apprehensive of; those two aforementioned occupants were only teenagers-even younger than Jean-and were likely to pose no more threat than a pair of docile puppies. Still, Zhenmeng didn't know that.

Jean was shepherded ahead of the thug, suffering periodic violent shoves in the centre of his back to drive him onwards, oft times almost sending him tumbling head over heels down the staircase before he managed to regain his balance in the nick of time. Normally such mistreatment would cause ire to ignite and steadily grow inside the Soldats agent, but on this occasion the only feeling that grew was dread. While his cover as Simon's withdrawn assistant seemingly remained intact, it wasn't much of a comfort; Jean was in a bad situation, any way he sliced it… and a life threatening one at that. Zhenmeng and Sakamoto would probably kill him just for the hell of it-he certainly wouldn't put it past them considering that they were marked for death by Soldats. Furthermore Zhenmeng didn't look like somebody who would have any misgivings about torturing and subsequently murdering a few people… or, for that matter, did his scary partner. How Jean was going to get out of this without ending up face down in a pool of his own blood he had no idea.

Sakamoto followed wordlessly behind Zhenmeng as the three of them descended below the computer store front, a towering shadow looming over the other two men, an impassable sentinel who helped to further escalate Jean's fear every time the Soldats follower braved a glance over his shoulder. Zhenmeng was the obvious one to watch out for between the wanted pair with his brash and obnoxious behaviour, but Sakamoto held his own different kind of menace with his stoic demeanour, one in some ways more intimidating than his partner's. Silence could hide all manner of things, things a person's imagination had the unwelcome habit of making into their worst nightmares.

"What the hell? Ezza, you dumbass!" Simon yelled angrily as he spun his desk chair away from his ferret and to the basement stairs, glaring at Jean as he emerged-with a harsh push by Zhenmeng-from the murk into the fluorescent light glowing from his flashy computer box fixtures and monitor screens. "Can't you see I'm busy with… with…." Simon's reprimand immediately lost steam and choked off to a weak croak as Jean's captors entered the light and revealed their presence, the hacker's mouth still working although no words came out. "Oh shit…" he eventually succeeded in forcing out-albeit scarcely audibly-no doubt recognising Zhenmeng and Sakamoto from Bouquet's photograph.

"Oh no…" the ferret standing next to Simon meanwhile breathed. "I know yo-! It's-!" He practically squeaked out the halting words, pointing a shaky finger at the black-clad men with wild panic splashed all over his face. Jean certainly knew that feeling.

Zhenmeng roughly barged past Jean, a roughish lopsided grin pulling up the left side of his mouth as he placed himself a short distance in front of Simon and the snitch. Jean was knocked aside as if he were just a scrawny child even though he and Zhenmeng were around the same height and build, and tripped over a mass of cables flowing along the floor from the many computers on Simon's desk, landing painfully on his behind.

"I guess you the guy in charge," Zhenmeng directed to Simon, the hacker somehow seeming paler than usual in spite of his normal pallid skin tone. The longhaired man put his hands on his hips and took a couple of moments to look around the basement, his eyebrows raised in apparent appreciation. "Wau…" he then said, while still studying the dimly lit room, "I bet could hold noisy parties and no one hear it…" The right corner of Zhenmeng's mouth slowly climbed higher on his face to join its mate opposite, the black suited man's grin becoming an all out sneer of malicious import, his teeth slightly bared. "And I bet no matter how loud you scream, no one hear it…" he added, his voice, formally conversational, now hard and nasty… and foreboding.

At that second Simon's ferret, who Jean had observed twitching agitatedly all throughout Zhenmeng's examination, apparently lost his nerve and suddenly tried to bolt past the sneering man, making a reckless break for the stairs and escape. But escape would not come that easily.

Before the ferret could move more than a couple of steps Zhenmeng took action, his lightning fast rejoinder to the teenager's dash for freedom in the form of a solid elbow to the side of the head, the impact so forceful that Jean could hear bone colliding. The informant's flight was brutally cut short as he staggered ungainly backwards from the hit, like a punch-drunk boxer on the verge of being knocked out. He looked up at his assailant, only to get a devastating left hook straight to his face, the blow knocking his baseball cap clean off his head. The ferret collapsed to the floor next to his dropped cap, his left eye swelling shut; an angry red disfigurement on his visage. He then rolled slowly over onto his side before simply laying there sobbing pitifully in pain and terror, drawing his limbs close to his body while it quivered with his mewling.

Not a shred of sympathy had passed through Jean's heart as Simon's snitch was beaten; in his opinion the moron deserved every torture coming his way from Zhenmeng and more. There was no question in Jean's mind that the careless bastard was responsible for the predicament he and Simon were now in; the ferret's sloppy surveillance methods had to have tipped the vastly more competent Zhenmeng and Sakamoto onto Simon's curiosity in their activities, and consequently the duo had tailed the stupid kid right to the computer expert's doorstep.

Jean ground his teeth in combination of anxiety and resentment where he sat on the floor just to the left of Simon's desk, black cables running under his bent legs to the taxed power points on the wall opposite, vanishing into the shadows of the room. Damn that fool! In all of Jean's time in the field-short as it may be-he had never expected his life to be placed in very great and very real danger. And now, because of someone else's blunder, he may not live to see another day. Fuck!

The Soldats operative watched as Zhenmeng kicked the prone ferret in the stomach, the Asian's intense eyes hot amber that burned in the light, their prior playful lustre long gone as the mischievous imp showed his true colours as a vicious devil. It was fitting that the clumsy spy was the first to experience the repercussions of his own laxity. Jean hoped that he was in immense pain indeed; if Zhenmeng's ministrations didn't kill him, then the Soldats agent would definitely finish the job.

Zhenmeng planted a foot on the informant's right shoulder and pushed his unresisting body over onto its back, glaring down at the teenager with a contempt that did not bode well for his personal safety. Zhenmeng then stomped his foot down on the ferret's sternum, before exerting most of his body weight on that leg and effectively holding his victim in place. The teenager cried out weakly at the abuse and writhed beneath the sole of the thug's shoe, his mouth remaining open afterwards in a silent yet earnest appeal for aid… but it would never come; he was begging to the wrong crowd.

"Brat!" Zhenmeng spat at his subjugated quarry, grinding his heel into the kid's chest with seeming glee at the torment he was inflicting. "You like to watch, ne? Ne, little spy?" Still grinning from ear to ear, he put a hand inside his suit jacket and drew out the gun he had shown threateningly to Jean earlier, its brushed steel reflecting in the light with dark intent.

Simon-who had stayed completely rigid in his chair up until this point, gripping its armrests as if he were on a roller-coaster ride, his knuckles as white as his face-started at the sight of the bared firearm. "What…. You can't be serious…!" he gasped, his expression a picture of abject horror. Jean wondered if the hacker had ever seen a real gun before, one that hadn't been confined to the harmless digital polygon realm of video games.

"Quiet," Zhenmeng said simply, before offhandedly lashing out with the pistol at Simon without even so much as glancing in his direction.

The unforgiving metal casing of the weapon struck the unsuspecting hacker in the mouth, slapping him back into his chair, which in turn propelled it into the desk with a bang, the collision toppling several stacks of CDs that scattered across the floor. Simon grabbed his mouth as tears collected in his eyes, and a muffled scream was emitted from behind his covering hands, accompanied by copious dribbles of blood that oozed from between his fingers-Zhenmeng must have dislodged at least one tooth.

Zhenmeng seized a fistful of the snivelling snitch's t-shirt with his free hand and hauled the teenager's upper body towards him, his previously restraining foot moving to the floor. He cocked the hammer of his pistol and bent down until his face was only a few inches from the boy's; his battered mug in stark contrast with Zhenmeng's handsome features.

"Yes, you like to watch," Zhenmeng hissed into the spy's face while brandishing the handgun where he could see it. The informant whimpered and tried to turn away from his attractive but merciless attacker, but the Asian man would have none of it. "Look at me when I talking to you, you shit!" he snarled, shaking the boy hard in his grasp until he complied. He calmed then, his wide grin returning. "Your eyes are odd, now," Zhenmeng remarked, scrutinising the ferret's swollen shut left eye. "You want me even eyes up?" He brought up his pistol to the boy's other, widely dilated eye, and pressed the end of the barrel against it, forcing it closed. "Well, little spy?"

"Please…" the informant pleaded in a soft, frightened voice, sounding like the kid he merely was. He trembled before Zhenmeng, and Jean could make out tears leaking from his one good eye. "Please don't… please… PLEASE!"

The ferret's whispers rose to a final crescendo in Jean's ears, his shriek borne of pure, undiluted terror filling the basement and snapping the Soldats follower out of his stupor. What the hell was he doing, just literally sitting here on his ass looking on as events got more and more out of hand? Did he *want* to die? Zhenmeng and Sakamoto were clearly hardened criminals; there was no way they were going to let any of them live! Simon and his informant were just kids at heart; they were both screwed the second Zhenmeng and Sakamoto came into the basement, but damn it, Jean had ties to Soldats; for god's sake he should use those ties! He had to inform someone-Breffort, his former superiors; frankly *anyone* with Soldats!-that the Asian men wanted in Paris by the society were here, underneath Simon's computer shop front. It was his duty! And if Soldats happened to deploy a hit squad to his location-and to his rescue-as a result then that would be fine, too. After all, Jean couldn't continue to serve Soldats if he was dead.

While Zhenmeng further toyed with the snitch, jamming the barrel of his pistol harder into his eye as he spouted more intimidating suggestions about what to do with it, Jean began edging his right hand-the one furthest away from the black-clad man and hidden from view by his legs-across the dusty concrete floor and towards his pants' pocket. Utilising his mobile phone was the only option he could think of without resorting to suicidal heroics, something he was definitely not suited for. If Jean could get a text message to Breffort, the council member could have a taskforce dispatched to save his bacon before it was shot full of holes.

Jean crept his hand closer to his pocket as quickly as he dared, his movements offset by a slowing wariness-desperation and fear battling each other to a stalemate. Cold sweat trickled lazily down his face and stung his eyes, while also sticking stray strands of his shoulder length hair to his cheeks. His heart thumped rapidly in his chest, a manic beat that flooded his eardrums and one he thought loud enough for everybody in the room to hear. Contrary to his internal tension, outwardly Jean appeared to be sitting sedately on the floor, albeit somewhat restless but not beyond the level that one would expect somebody in his situation to be. Or at any rate, he prayed he appeared that way.

Jean's fingertips touched his phone inside his pocket; the feeling of plastic on his skin motivating him to proceed with a burst of both improved hope and heightened fear. Carefully, and using only his fingertips, he slid the mobile phone out of his pocket, gently lowering it to the floor to not make a sound. The partial darkness Jean had been pushed into by Zhenmeng worked to his advantage but also to his disadvantage; the movements of his fingers on the phone would be greatly concealed, however as soon as he started pressing buttons the device would light up in an condemning green glow; a beacon plainly displaying his actions to anybody who cared to look his way. He would have to work fast and simply pray that his body would shield the bright phone from everybody's gaze.

Keeping his eyes fixed on Zhenmeng and the abused informant while schooling his breathing to stay relaxed and rhythmic in an endeavour to preserve the innocuous look of a scared young guy, Jean commenced typing a short and succinct message to Breffort, his fingers dancing over the keypad with a speed and deftness produced by fear. The seconds past like hours, and as each one ticked by Jean's heart felt like it was going to leap out from his throat.

But then it was done. Jean hit the button to send the precious message to the Soldats higher-up and then allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief-there was no doubt in his mind that Breffort would receive and read it almost instantaneously; in his position the man had to be forever on the ball. Jean just hoped that he would send help in time.

Jean looked away from Zhenmeng… and unwittingly locked eyes with the steely violet stare of Sakamoto. He stood motionless directly in front of Jean with his head turned the Soldats operative's way, a black and white stone statue erected imperiously about a metre from the foot of the basement stairs; a silent sentry barring the sole route out of this underground torture chamber. Or perhaps a gargoyle in human form. The glow from the computers illuminated only half of Sakamoto, his features split down the middle in a mirror of light and dark; one side deathly pale, the other veiled in shadow-a man with one foot in the grave… or maybe emerging from it.

Jean's throat dried out, what little moisture it had left vaporised by the manifestation of a sudden desert plain. Sakamoto had been so still, so quiet, that he had forgotten the man was even there. His rowdy partner's antics had also proved to be a magnet for attention, leaving him free from eyes and minds to lurk unnoticed and do as he wished, blending into the backdrop until he became indistinguishable from any other part of it. It was a fact that Jean had learned too late, and now had the potential to be a fatal mistake. Hysterical panic poised to snatch hold of him, and he swallowed hard in an effort to maintain control of himself although the action came with difficultly, a parched wasteland shifting. He unconsciously held his breath as he stared unblinkingly at Sakamoto, somehow unable to break the look in spite of fervently wanting to. Sweat pasted his clothes to his body and Jean felt chilled, but it wasn't because of the perspiration. Had Sakamoto seen him use his mobile phone? Shit. He was dead. He was dead!

A muted buzzing suddenly emanated from inside Sakamoto's overcoat, the noise causing Zhenmeng to look over his shoulder at his associate, his gun still squashed into the cavity of the ferret's eye. Sakamoto, however, did not immediately react, instead prolonging the stare with Jean, much to the Soldats agent's dismay. But, eventually, he reached inside his ebony coat and fished out a phone, opening it up and bringing it to his ear while his gaze welcomingly wandered away from Jean.

The Soldats follower's muscles relaxed and he resumed breathing again. Saved by the buzz-right now to him there was no sweeter sound.

After simply holding the phone to his mouth and ear for several moments, Sakamoto grunted into the receiver and started speaking what Jean believed to be Chinese or Japanese to the person on the other line, his voice monotonous-unemotional. "Kaede…? …Hmph…. Doko? …Ryoukai."

The conversation was brisk and Jean got the impression it was rather curt as well- whomever Sakamoto had been speaking to must not be regarded as a friend by the black-garbed man. His sour expression that was even bitterer than his regular ill-tempered countenance as he put his phone away helped to also attest to that likelihood. Whoever the caller had been, he or she should watch their back.

"Dare?" Zhenmeng said, although Jean had no clue as to what that meant.

Sakamoto shook his head slightly at his partner and then turned to Simon, the hacker still clutching his gushing mouth and crying softly. "You," the white-haired man said grimly as he took a couple of steps towards the computer expert, speaking French once again. "Find me an address."

Simon looked up at Sakamoto, his eyes wet and his chest heaving as he blubbered, reduced to a bawling baby by a single smack in the mouth. Jean would have found it funny if he was sure he wouldn't devolve to such a state himself if-or rather when, he amended with worry-Zhenmeng or his partner transferred their attention to him.

Without warning a deafening bang exploded inside the basement, followed by a scream of excruciating agony. Jean and Simon jumped at the ear-splitting blast and looked to its source, while Sakamoto simply looked, unafraid and unsurprised.

"My finger slipped," Zhenmeng said with a sheepish smile, holding up his smoking pistol for emphasis. Yeah, right. Jean knew that men like him did not make errors like that.

The informant was the one responsible for the scream. He writhed on the floor holding his left thigh, which was haemorrhaging like a busted water pipe. Blood pumped from the gunshot's entrance and exit wound on the front and rear of his leg as he futilely attempted to stem the top stream with his hands, screeching all the while.

Sakamoto looked at the bloodthirsty Zhenmeng for a few seconds as the shorter man shrugged nonchalantly, and then returned his attention to a now even more petrified Simon, apparently dismissing his partner's barbaric act.

"Find me an address," Sakamoto repeated to Simon over the wails of the informant. The hacker didn't seem to be listening however; his eyes were riveted to his spy howling at full volume on the floor as the teenager bled his life away. Simon had even ceased weeping, although his damp cheeks and red eyes remained as evidence to his lapse of nerve.

A series of bright orange flares lit up the centre of the gloomy basement as gunfire once more erupted, and the snitch's tortured cries were abruptly cut off-permanently. Jean looked on as Zhenmeng fired five or six rounds into Simon's ferret, ruby rosettes bursting out of his jerking torso like rupturing cists. And then he was dead. Just like that. Blood seemed to flow from everywhere, running freely on the floor. There was so much of it. Jean had never seen a dead body before, let alone someone murdered right before his eyes. It was horrific, but at the same time fascinating. He was surprised at how easy it was for someone to die.

"Finally!" Zhenmeng exclaimed in relief, shaking his head down at the corpse. "I thought you would never shut up! Don't you know it is rude to talk while others try to talk? Geez!" He pulled the trigger of his handgun again and sent another bullet into the carcass of what had previously been a living, breathing person; the projectile's entry lost in the swamp of red on its chest.

Sakamoto spared another glance at his murdering companion and then looked back to Simon. "Find me an address," he demanded yet again, this time in absolute quiet. "The name is Albert Laroque. Find him; find it. Now."

Simon bobbed his head emphatically, his wide eyes staring at the remains of his informant; probably envisioning his own fate would be the same as his contact's if he failed to cooperate.

Jean blinked, his own, morbid curiosity in the ferret's cadaver disrupted at the mention of a name he recognised. "Albert Laroque…?" he gasped. Albert Laroque was almost on par with Breffort, a senior Soldats official just an echelon below the council. How had Sakamoto learnt that name? Jean himself had only overheard it once from his superiors. "That's-!" Jean continued to blurt out, before the Soldats agent shut up abruptly, realising his slip.

But the realisation came belatedly. Looking frantically between Sakamoto and Zhenmeng, he saw them look back at him, fresh interest on their faces. Jean looked quickly away, his gaze moving to the unguarded stairs, fear fuelling the adrenaline that started to course through his veins at a frenzied rate. Escape. He couldn't wait for an armed Soldats unit to come to his rescue now; he was going to end up like the ferret if he didn't flee at once. He had made a small blunder, but to men whose heads a huge and influential organisation like Soldats sought, a small blunder may as well be a gigantic, glaring misstep. If the duo didn't pick up on it, it would be an act of god.

"You know, I have been smelling something in here that I cannot put finger on," Zhenmeng commented, as if merely talking about the weather. He strolled away from the body of the informant he had created, meandering casually towards the basement staircase. His pistol was still in his hand, spoiling the image of a man simply taking a peaceful walk.

Jean's heart raced, and sweat once again beaded on his brow. Fear. Fear gripped him like an entity; freezing his heart and numbing his limbs, lead weights tied to his arms and legs. The steps looked so far away and yet so close, tantalising before his eyes, a staircase to Heaven; salvation in wood. He could make it. All he had to do was move. Zhenmeng had the gun, but he had the Fear. And Fear gave people wings.

Jean leapt up and sprinted for the staircase. His feet seemed to float over the floor as his legs pumped furiously, his white-feathered wings propelling him to deliverance; the wings borrowed from the Angel of Mercy. Hope rose inside his heart-a giddy feeling, light and airy, as if he were soaring high amongst the clouds.

But then the wings disintegrated, the angel turning from him, and Jean crashed to the ground, to the hard concrete floor. Hope died as an agony exploded in his left knee, buckling it. His ears rang, the wailing song of fallen angels-demons, or rather, men and women as demons, the only reality in this world. No forgiving angels treaded where Jean was, and Heaven was a myth held onto only by the damned. The sole angels here were those of the ruthless kind-Vengeance and Death. The Angel of Death had cast its lifeless gaze upon Jean this night, and now its servant, the devil masquerading as an imp, was coming to carry out the seraphim's bidding.

Zhenmeng grinned at Jean hunched over on the floor, his eyes lingering on his shattered knee, a bullet having torn it apart. He squatted down to the Soldats operative's level, and prodded the wound with the barrel of his gun, still hot from its recent use-a burning pitchfork in Hell, a domain that was no myth. Jean clenched his teeth, grinding them forcefully together to prevent himself from screaming.

"You stink, pal," Zhenmeng was saying, his voice coming from the other end of a long hallway, tinny and faint. "You stink like Soldats…."

Fear was a double-edged sword, all false hope and misguiding proposals. And as for the Angel of Mercy, if it did in fact exist… it was just fickle. But hell, Jean hadn't been much of a religious type anyway.

* * *

Kirika ducked her head back under the protection of the table after Millet's closing words, her last sight of her and Mireille's target one of him brusquely waving his arm in a signal for his assembled men to recommence their attack. And then suddenly bullets were falling like raindrops, a deadly downpour that descended from all angles and were released by a gathering of men, rather than one of clouds. And no storm that was birthed in the heavens could match the fury or danger of this particular tempest. No, a storm like this could only be akin to those in that place called Hell, wrought by the same kinds of people: sinners, for those of pure, peaceful hearts did not create such things. Hell was a sinner's final destination after Death claimed them, or so it was written. Kirika wasn't sure if it were true or not, but if it was, then many new faces would be appearing in the depths of its fiery pits tonight, joining the ones she and Mireille had already condemned to that wicked place.

A deluge of slugs showered the tabletop above Kirika's head, the pitter-patter thuds of lead compacting against wood loud in her ears. She could make out the crashes and tinkles of breaking glass above the storm-gunfire heavily saturating Mireille's position behind the bar, bottles and glasses destroyed uncaringly in its wake, liquor spilling like blood. But Mireille would be okay. Kirika had utter confidence in her abilities, and in the woman herself-if she didn't, then she could never wholly have faith in her while in the midst of combat; their duet would lack cohesion, lack trust. Still, the girl was also aware of the limits of the blonde's abilities, and as a result she would feel more at ease if she could take some of the pressure off of her partner; Mireille was effectively pinned down where she was with very little opportunity to shoot back, the dual automatic fire from Millet's FN P90 on the gantry above and his goon's AKSU-74 on the floor the main culprits. But Kirika's desire to assist her love would have to wait; the darkhaired assassin had her own troubles to deal with right now.

Kirika saw that the five sets of legs in amongst the tables' and chairs' metal ones were rapidly bearing down on her, weaving around the furniture or in some cases, throwing them roughly out of their path. The group was close, almost upon her, a mere handful of metres separating them. She had been sitting here in shelter for long enough; it was time to venture out into the raging tempest… and deliver calm.

Kirika pinpointed the lead gangster's legs and fired a round from her Beretta into his left shinbone, producing a scream and causing him to trip forwards and land on all fours, temporarily halting his fellows' progress behind him and also distracting them… just as the sharp girl had predicted. She rolled backwards in a tight ball, out from under the table, and then smoothly uncurled onto her feet, standing upright. The glare from the spotlight mounted on the gantry hit her full in the face as she rose, harsh white making her squint and painting her as clear target. But there was no time to worry about that, nor could she let herself be sidetracked by her marred vision. A moment's hesitation would spell a swift end-she had to keep moving, she had to stay fast on her feet. And she had to have faith.

As if in answer to Kirika's silent conviction, the spotlight suddenly cut out in a burst of glass along with its neighbour highlighting the ravaged bar, both smashed by a well-aimed 9mm bullet shot by a guardian angel. Even when under intense suppressing fire Mireille played her role as Kirika's vigilant partner to the absolute best of her capabilities; one eye on the battle, one eye on the girl, and then acting on her behalf when necessary. It was much like Kirika herself behaved in regards to her pledge to defend Mireille; the only difference was, the girl's vow endured beyond the heat of combat. Although if she thought about it Mireille did look out for her during their everyday lives too, her recent conversation with the woman in the bar nearby Millet's headquarters earlier tonight coming to mind. But that was due to no childhood promise-Mireille had not made one like Kirika's at any stage of her life to the girl's knowledge. Instead, Kirika believed it was a product of love.

Kirika bounded up on the table, the previous incoming gunfire that had battered it only seconds before ceased with the approaching gangsters' attentions diverted to their lamed comrade. She took two quick steps across the deeply gouged surface of the table and leapt off it, aiming straight for the goons a short distance behind it. The men looked up from their still howling friend as Kirika hurled herself at them, their faces registering their shock at her unexpected manoeuvre and appearance, while the hands wielding their weapons reacted sluggishly.

Kirika moved her gun to the right and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession as she sailed through the air, her legs tucked neatly underneath her body, muscles taut and primed. A gangster on her far right took the two rounds in the forehead, dropping him immediately. He fell backwards onto a table, before he slid limply off it and to the floor, lying dead amid the surrounding chairs. One down, one crippled, and three left.

As soon as Kirika was in range, she uncoiled her legs from underneath her and lashed out with both her feet in a wide midair scissor kick, striking two gangsters standing to her left and right hard in the face, while leaving a central one unmolested. But the remaining man's reprieve was short-lived; while the two other gangsters were reeling from the assassin's twin blows, she folded her legs back to her body before clamping her thighs around his head with crushing force, a choking sound escaping his throat. Kirika grabbed his right wrist with her free hand and kept it well away from her as he desperately attempted to shove his pistol into her ribs to free himself from her vice-like grip, his shots discharging harmlessly into the floor instead. Meanwhile the momentum of her jump toppled the goon, and as they fell together the girl put the silenced barrel of her Beretta M1934 to his left eye and fired a single, decisive time, putting a lump of lead into his brain.

The dead gangster's back hit the floor and Kirika released his head from between her thighs before rolling forwards, agilely ending up back on her feet. By then the pair of still upright enemies-their injured companion remaining hunched over on the floor, whimpering in pain-had recovered themselves and were turning around after her, their faces furious and marked with blood; one with a split lip and the other with a bloodied nose. Their guns were raised and about to voice their anger in a way mere words never could-sinners often spoke in such a method.

But the gangsters' voices would be ineffective; the darkhaired assassin was already relocating-fast. Kirika dashed for the nearest table, jumping upon it and then running atop it before hopping randomly to the next one, preferring to use them to swiftly traverse the sea of round tables and chairs instead of wading through it. True, she was completely open as she sprung from table to table-a bounding blur-but in some cases speed and deftness more than made up for cover… like this case.

The sights of the goons' weapons tracked Kirika, the men unleashing their rage in a hail of bullets. However, they trailed slightly behind the lithesome assassin, the shots chasing her staggered, somewhat circular path around them with a delay of at least a full second-much too slow. Yet Kirika would not be able to dodge their gunfire forever, and more importantly Mireille was waiting for her support-one rule of being an assassin Altena's training had indoctrinated in her was to perform a kill quickly and without hesitation; if someone was deemed to die then die they should as soon as possible, the means did not matter as long as it was efficiently done. In the opera of Death to play around invited it. And this dance had gone on long enough.

The instant Kirika's feet landed on a table again she abruptly stopped in its centre and spun around, her right leg extending outwards and lodging in between a nearby chair's backrest and seat, bringing the piece of furniture with her. The chair wasn't too heavy-a steel frame with the rest made up of an aluminium alloy-nevertheless one would think a girl of Kirika's build would find difficulty in lifting it in such a manner with only a single leg. However, she did so with minimum effort. The muscles of her outwardly belying scrawny leg tightened to firm cords, revealing a power beneath the veneer of frailty along with a fine muscle tone developed over many years of arduous exercise. Kirika's body was a weapon, and to be an effective weapon it had to possess a degree of strength great enough to brandish hefty firearms with consummate skill and to be a rival to any foe's in close combat. Breaking bones-for example, necks-did require some effort, after all.

Kirika flung the chair at the two gangsters trying to shoot her at the apex of her whirl, the flying package of metal bashing into the men and knocking them off balance, as well disrupting their aim. The assassin then dived towards them, her Beretta held in both her hands. She fired twice, splotches of crimson appearing on the goons' chests before they collapsed beside the thrown chair, defeated.

Kirika landed on another round table to the rear of the slain men and skimmed across it on her stomach before she came to a halt, shifting onto her side. The first gangster she had shot finally clambered to one knee beside the table, his gun lifting to target her in a quivering grasp. The man's countenance was pale and drawn with the affliction of fear combined with pain, sweat plainly visible on his brow and coursing down his face. He looked upon Kirika as if she were not a mere young girl but a monster come to get him, as if she were a… a demon. But he was right. She was a demon, wasn't she? A demon that wore the guise of a girl. His was an expression she had seen countless times on just as many different faces. And she understood it; she understood why they looked at her like that-they had been sinners face to face with a sinner worse than themselves. A sinner amongst sinners.

[A sinner amongst sinners….]

Kirika casually kicked the goon's pistol out of his weak grip where she lay, and then shot him squarely in the head, putting him summarily out of his mental and physical misery. Let the sinners fear, let the sinners think what they like; she didn't care. What did it matter? The only person's feelings Kirika was concerned about was Mireille's; everybody else's were unimportant. Kirika was a demon-so be it. She was a demon loved by an angel-she could be the most terrible sinner in the world as long as Mireille looked upon her with eyes filled with affection, as long as she was bathed in the soothing light of her partner's all encompassing love.

There was a sharp crack from a short distance away followed by a rapidly nearing piercing whistle, prompting Kirika to roll quickly off the table and to the floor, a split second before the whistling reached its climax. A rifle round suddenly took a chunk out of the table where she had lain moments before, the impact rocking it above her head. One of the snipers on the gantry with Millet had set his sights on her.

Kirika tilted her head to one side as she ejected the depleted clip from her pistol, a single reddish-brown eye peeking out from under the table to verify her deductions. She saw that Millet was blazing away at Mireille's position with his submachine gun, barking orders and curses in the same breath. His escort to the right of him armed with a rifle was in the interim occupied with trying to pick off Mireille every time the woman stuck her head out of cover to return fire. Thankfully, the gangster had been unsuccessful so far; his bad aim likely caused by the bloody wound in his upper right arm-Mireille had no doubt categorised that particular man as a priority threat.

Millet's second accompanying minion also bearing a bolt-action rifle had abandoned Mireille as a target however and was now focusing on Kirika, the girl's swift despatching of five of his friends a probable motivation. At this range it would be tricky for her to take him down, not because she wouldn't be able to hit him, but rather because her Beretta M1934 lacked the stopping power needed to deliver a fatal injury. Kirika would have to get closer, but that would mean racing into an open space without even tables to bounce around on, as well as risking being shot by the other gangsters still on their feet.

Kirika pulled back her head just as the sniper fired at her once again, the bullet whizzing by the edge of the sheltering table and striking the floor next to her leg. The assassin ignored the near miss and retrieved a fresh magazine from the ammunition holder strapped around her left thigh under her skirt, her eyes meanwhile gazing ahead of her, assessing the rest of this theatre of conflict. From under the table she could make out that the cluster of men who had gathered on the peculiar stage beside the curtains appeared to be all wiped out, their bodies slumped unmoving and chaotically about the vicinity. Kirika had known they would be among the first to die-Mireille would never let such vulnerable targets go unchallenged, nor would she allow them to rectify their serious error in judgement.

Kirika slid the new clip into her pistol, her eyes moving to the left hand side of the stage's catwalk. She observed that the group of enemies assembled there were still more or less intact; only two corpses sprawled at the feet of their more lively comrades. Unfortunately the gangster armed with the AKSU-74 was not among them, instead joining his friends in spraying the bar Mireille was hiding behind liberally with steaming lead. Something still had to be done about him; his constant barrage of fire upon the blonde's location was making it hard for her to counterattack.

"Son of a-!" Kirika heard Millet roar all of sudden, his tone teeming with agony, while the drone of his spitting FN P90 was brought to a halt. She chanced another peek out from cover, and saw that the leader of the syndicate she and Mireille were currently assaulting had taken a bullet in the right shoulder… and seemed to not like it one bit.

"God damn it!" Millet continued to loudly and most vehemently cuss, gnashing his teeth in pain. He turned angrily to his left escort, the rifleman intent on sniping at Mireille. "Use 'em, use 'em! I don't give a shit about the damage; just kill that whore! The place is already so fucked up anyway!"

The gangster nodded and put down his rifle, before bending down to retrieve something hidden behind the provisional wooden fortification running along the gantry, the numerous pockmarks dotting it no doubt a result of Mireille's stray shots. When next he stood upright he was holding a glass bottle containing a dark amber fluid in one hand, a dirty rag stuffed down its neck and dipping into the greasy-looking liquid. It was a Molotov cocktail-an improvised firebomb, makeshift napalm. Kirika was familiar with them; they were crude, but effective anti-personnel weapons. Typically the best ones were made of a mixture of petrol and oil, but any flammable substance worked. Flammable substance… Mireille was sitting behind the bar, where a myriad of alcoholic beverages had been spilled during the firefight… and all equally as flammable as the fluid in the Molotov. Even the slightest lick of flame would plunge the area into an instant scorching inferno, and the woman Kirika loved with it.

The cacophony of fierce shouts and spewing gunfire faded to a distant murmur as Kirika pulled back the hammer of her Beretta with her thumb, the click as it locked in place sharp in her ears; an underscore to her steadfast determination. A ghost of the past whispered to her, its feminine voice softly insistent, a reminder though she needed none. All other threats were suddenly relegated to the lowest precedence as a higher purpose cried out to the girl. With her pinned behind the bar, there was little Mireille could do to evade any Molotov cocktails tossed in her direction, nor was there any way she could flee from her current location without exposing herself to a variety of fire, automatic and otherwise. Mireille-Kirika's partner-needed her. And Kirika would answer her silent but unmistakable call. It was what she lived for.

It would take speed, dexterity and precision, but the girl knew she would succeed; she would *not* let Odette Bouquet down… and of course, she would not let Mireille Bouquet down either. A righteous purpose fuelled her, one rooted in love, not hate. And with that strength, Kirika would be unstoppable.

As the gangster on the gantry lit the cloth emerging from top of the Molotov cocktail he was holding with a lighter and prepared to launch it, Kirika rolled out from under the table and into an upright stance. Her manoeuvre placed her in reach of another table, close enough that she followed up her sideways roll with a second one across the tabletop without pause, fluidly rolling over her shoulder. The assassin moved swiftly, aware that she still had the attention of the now lone sniper who was tracing her every step with his rifle.

As Kirika's perspective of the room spun around, the goon on the gantry threw his flaming concoction, the bottle flying end over end on its destructive course for the highly combustible bar. Knowing that timing and accuracy were everything, as Kirika righted herself once again-her feet touching the surface of the table-she propelled herself off it, executing a midair cartwheel without any support whatsoever. Her vision spun yet again, a topsy-turvy world, but the girl's concentration remained focus. While she was completely upside down, Kirika targeted the Molotov cocktail and fired once, her solitary shot destroying the firebomb well short of its goal. Liquid flame mixed with glass shards drizzled down-Hell's rain-with small puddles of fire speckling the floor and continuing to burn long after the initial shower.

Kirika finished her cartwheel with her feet firmly on yet another round table, her landing perfect. She immediately leapt back the way she had come however-a simple jump this time-barely avoiding an incoming rifle round which instead struck the backrest of a chair that had been to her rear, bowling it over.

While the Molotov-chucking goon's first effort had failed, he would not give up that easily. He stubbornly set fire to another cocktail-evidently having several pre-prepared for Kirika and Mireille's coming-and then tossed it once again at the bar.

Kirika, seeing another prime danger to her love's safety, dived to her left and fired at the blazing object, her Beretta held steady in her two hands. A rifle round flew by inches from her face courtesy of the sniper, but the dedicated girl's aim held straight and true, blowing the Molotov cocktail apart in a fiery explosion and sending its blistering contents and its broken container down its predecessor's route-harmlessly to the floor. Her task accomplished, as the darkhaired girl sailed over a table she slammed her free hand on top of it-a prop. Her momentum continued to carry her through the air, her hand halting her upper body's motion but allowing her lower half to go on, and as a result, arranging her in a one-handed handstand. The position was fleeting however, Kirika letting herself continue onwards and out of the vulnerable pose until the manoeuvre had become another cartwheel, albeit one with a single arm for support. The lithe assassin finally ended up with her feet on the floor in the dense lake of tables and chairs.

Meanwhile, Millet had not taken kindly to Kirika's interference. "Someone shoot that little brat!" he shrieked, briefly breaking off his attack on Mireille with his FN P90, which he had been continuing to fire in spite of its vibrations that had to be aggravating his shoulder wound. His voice was somewhat hoarse and cracked near the end of his furious order, the consequence of bellowing non-stop at the top of his lungs throughout the battle.

In response, the gangster sporting the AKSU-74 submachine gun swung his weapon around to face Kirika, partnering with his rifle-wielding comrade hanging in the air above the stage in trying to kill the dexterous girl.

Kirika bent low and scurried under a table and didn't stop running as she was abruptly inundated with gunfire, the high-calibre AKSU-74 shredding apart the flimsy and already substantially pounded wooden tabletops in its path, their thin black vinyl covering proving to be no obstacle. It was going to be exceedingly tougher to dodge such heavy fire while defending Mireille from the Molotov cocktails, a fact that stood out like a bright flashing neon sign in Kirika's mind, much like the ones she had witnessed outside in the street before entering Millet's headquarters. Nevertheless, she would do it somehow. She would grow wings if she had to.

But Kirika's need to suddenly sprout wings turned out not to be necessary. As she spared a look over her shoulder, back at the goon who had been throwing the homemade firebombs, she was treated to the spectacle of his latest Molotov exploding in his grasp. The man using the AKSU-74 had made an oversight; he had redirected his formerly suppressing fire from the bar to assail Kirika, inadvertently freeing Mireille from a large portion of what had been keeping her more or less pinned. Millet's and his handful of remaining men's combined firepower-while formidable-was not sufficient enough to restrain an assassin of Mireille's talent indefinitely; in other words, they had uncaged the blonde. And now she was showing them her displeasure.

The gangster was completely swallowed in flames as soon as Mireille's Walther P99 burst his Molotov cocktail, the man becoming a human-sized conflagration-a literal screaming inferno. A third of the rickety gantry was set alight also, its wood walkway and the makeshift barricade succulent morsels for the hot flames.

Millet reacted quickly to the spontaneous combustion of his companion, kicking him in the chest and knocking him to the end of the gantry, wisely if heartlessly preventing him from spreading the fire. However as the melting gangster fell backwards and disappeared behind the stage's curtains, the said drapes caught on fire, the flickering flames scaling their entire length in a matter of seconds. Very soon half of the curtains on the right side of the stage were ablaze, and time was the only factor holding the fire back from consuming them all.

Mireille wasted no time after slaying the Molotov goon in a resourceful way, focusing her sights on the AKSU-74 man making life gruelling for Kirika now that his attention was diverted elsewhere. She blasted the oblivious gangster in the side of the head, her 9mm round splattering blood on his nearby friends as it drilled into his skull. He keeled over limply with his eyes rolled back and his mouth hanging open-as dead a person as Kirika had ever seen.

Kirika altered her course when she realised her partner and her had traded roles again; Mireille was now watching her back, permitting the slender girl to perform hazardous feats she wouldn't normally do without backup… or without a valid reason, when the blonde woman's personal wellbeing was on the line coming to mind.

Kirika swerved around to the surviving gathering of men bordering the catwalk and charged daringly towards them, her pistol loosing death without pause. In the meantime, Mireille directed her fire to Millet and the sniper, forcing them to crouch behind cover and letting the girl proceed without having to worry about being shot from above. They were a flawlessly coordinated duet preparing for the grand finale.

Kirika gunned down the trio of remaining gangsters in as many heartbeats, the men not knowing what hit them as she unloaded all of her ammunition into their bodies, ensuring their quick deaths. She was executing a rush attack, an attack that stressed total commitment-if any of the enemy were left alive to retaliate it could be fatal… unless of course the rusher engaged them in close combat to tie up their firearms. But in this particular situation, Kirika couldn't even afford the few seconds for such an action-Millet and the sniper wouldn't stay in cover for long in spite of Mireille's efforts, and the darkhaired girl was in a ripe spot to receive a bullet… or several.

Kirika threw herself to the floor as flush to the catwalk as she could, anticipating that she would be under fire at any second. But instead she heard the rapid muted discharge of Mireille's silenced pistol as she fired at will, and then all of a sudden there was a loud snap. Kirika poked her head cautiously above the catwalk and saw that the right foremost rope securing the gantry over the stage had broken, the probable result of the flames eating away at it and Mireille's further weakening gunshots. The blonde assassin then quickly shifted her aim to the opposite rope-one of two holding up the other end of the gantry-her blue eyes narrowing as she pinpointed the very slim target, before she unleashed a volley of rounds at it, her intentions obvious.

Millet and the sniper stumbled forwards into the barricade as the gantry jerked suddenly, before half the structure gave way, the support rope Mireille had shot at- fraying it-tearing in two. The pair of men were thrown from their perch and deposited unceremoniously onto the stage, momentarily stunned and open to attack, their weapons having escaped their hands. The end of the play-of the opera-was upon Kirika and Mireille.

Kirika leapt to her feet, shoving her empty Beretta into the waistband of her purple skirt at the small of her back. She then sprung onto the stage in one spry jump, Mireille vaulting effortlessly over the bullet hole ridden and glass-strewn surface of the bar and dashing to assist her as she did so. Millet and the rifleman began to rouse and clamber to their feet, but it was too late for them, even if they had maintained their grasps on their respective firearms. Kirika pounced at a nearby brass pole-one of those strange decorations running across the stage and along the middle of the catwalk-and latched onto it with both hands, before swinging herself gracefully around it, her feet leading the way.

The sniper looked up and was unexpectedly met by Kirika's feet planting squarely into his chest, violently smashing him backwards through the air. The back of his head then connected with an audible clang against the railing of the dangling gantry to his rear, painfully halting his flight and dropping him onto the stage in a heap. The gangster then struggled onto all fours, only to be lethally shot several times in the ribs; Mireille finishing off her partner's handiwork.

In the meantime Kirika continued to whirl around the pole with her lingering momentum, using what was left of it to reach Millet. She twisted her exceptionally flexible body into the required posture and then locked her legs on either side of his neck, trapping his head between her strong calves. Next, utilising his own bodyweight in conjunction with her physical strength, she overbalanced him and flung him headlong off the stage, dumping him hard against its side and in front of Mireille's waiting gun. Kirika then completed the flowing manoeuvre, twirling around the golden pole gradually lower and lower until her feet touched the stage, the agile girl coming to an elegant stop. She released the pole and hopped to the floor to join Mireille and their subdued target. All adversaries had been neutralised and the room was quiet; still-the opera had concluded.

Kirika pulled out her Beretta from behind the waistband of her skirt and replaced its depleted magazine with a full one as she walked to Mireille's side-just because the fighting was over didn't mean she could relax or become careless; there might be some remnants of Millet's syndicate still lurking in the building. As she approached her partner, she scanned her eyes over the woman's body, checking for injuries. But Kirika had upheld her earlier promise; there wasn't so much as a scratch to be seen on Mireille. Her light lilac coat and white pants were soiled with dark patches in several places however, probably the result of copious amounts of alcoholic drinks spilling down on her from bullet-cracked bottles while she had been behind the bar.

Millet glowered up at Mireille and Kirika from his spot on the floor, one hand reaching up to apply pressure to his gunshot wound in his right shoulder. Blood trickled down the side of his head also-no doubt caused by one of his recent tumbles-and sweat rings stained the underarms of his white shirt, with dust also tarnishing the garment. All in all, his once immaculate bearing was ruined.

"You think you can do this to me? And don't care how good you are; I'll see you both dead! DEAD!" Millet threatened the impassive duo of assassins, spittle flying from his mouth. But he had become a dog devoid of teeth; all bark and no bite.

"You will tell us everything you know," Mireille said flatly, her Walther levelled at Millet's chest and clearly unintimidated by the man's vow. "Who hired you, what details regarding us you have learned, how you knew to expect our arrival here; *everything*." Puddles of flame burned around the blonde assassin's feet from the destroyed Molotov cocktails, while the raging fires continuing to steadily engulf the stage's maroon curtains painted dancing orange lights on her cool face-an angel standing tall and proud in Hell before its cowed populace. Millet would talk.

Kirika's gun abruptly snapped to the curtains adorning the left side of the stage-yet untouched by the fires devouring its neighbours-as her keen hearing detected footsteps coming from that direction. Seconds later her suspicions proved correct, and a man emerged from behind the drapes, black square sunglasses shielding his eyes and reflecting the hot blaze nearby him. Kirika recalled him as the goon who had been on the gantry talking to Millet minutes before the firefight.

"You're wasting your time," the sunglasses man spoke as he rather nonchalantly traversed the stage towards Kirika and Mireille and their captive, apparently undaunted by the former young woman's pistol aimed his way. However, Kirika saw that his forehead was streaked with glistening sweat, but if it was caused by the heat of the adjacent curtain fire or by trepidation she couldn't be certain. "He doesn't know anything."

"Jacques! What are you doing? Shoot them!" Millet wailed as he craned his neck to look over his shoulder at his apparent associate, although Jacques' loyalty did seem to be questionable.

"Nah, I don't think so," Jacques said as he jumped off the stage, landing a few feet away from Kirika and Mireille, the darkhaired girl's Beretta M1934 warily following his every move.

"WHAT?" Millet yelled incredulously, his body tensing as if he were about to leap up in outrage and prompting Mireille to remind him of the Walther pointing at him with a slight wave of the weapon. "You traitor! I knew there was something strange about you today! How much did they pay you, you mercenary bastard?"

Jacques said nothing and just smirked, albeit a bit uneasily, a nervous tick repeatedly pulling up the raised corner of his mouth.

Mireille's eyes flicked briefly to Jacques before returning to a seething Millet, wordlessly putting her trust in Kirika to watch their new guest carefully. "You had better talk fast before we decide to treat you like another one of his men," the woman then warned in a no-nonsense tone, motioning at Millet with her Walther P99.

Jacques bobbed his head, his gaze roaming around the room and at the carnage it enclosed. "Heh, yeah, real impressive that," he commented in a weak chuckle. He then threw his hands up in a gesture of peace for Kirika's benefit, before slowly moving his hand to his blue suit jacket pocket and retrieving a cigarette. Squatting down with equal care, Jacques lit the end of it in a small nearby pool of Molotov flame with a slightly trembling hand, before standing up again.

"He's just a tool, an ignorant pawn, really," he revealed after taking a quick inhalation of his cigarette, breathing out the smoke in a sigh. He then smirked again, his eyes drifting to Millet who sat incensed on the floor. "But then what other kind of pawn is there?"

"Bastard…!" Millet snarled, his fury held in check only by Mireille's gun. Kirika was sure that if it weren't for her partner he would be ripping Jacques to shreds with his bare hands by now. The girl wondered though how long the threat of eating a bullet would dissuade him however; Millet looked very angry.

"It was his employers who provided the specifics to set this up, along with last night's ambush," Jacques went on. "Two Asian guys I'm sure you're familiar with…"

"That's a lie and you know it!" Millet shouted heatedly. "It was *you* who set the attacks up!"

"Be quiet," Mireille snapped at Millet in a stern voice. "Why should we trust anything you say?" she then directed to Jacques in a tone not much less harsh.

The brown haired man smiled and slowly took the cigarette from between his lips. "Let's just say we have a… mutual friend… whose interests coincide with your own."

"Does this friend have a name?" Mireille asked scornfully, although Kirika suspected the blonde already knew it, just like she herself did-Soldats.

Jacques simply continued to smile, not saying anything-he didn't have to.

"Still, I say again; why should we trust anything you have say?" Mireille then said, the contempt she possessed for the organisation Jacques evidently worked for an almost tangible thing.

"Funny," the Soldats operative deadpanned.

"I wasn't joking," Mireille said coldly.

Jacques merely looked at the imposing blonde for a few seconds, an expression of discomfort frozen on his face, before he took a quick, anxious breath and shook his head slightly. "Look, we're on the same side here. What's more I'm just a messenger in the right place at the right time," he confessed. "You really are wasting your time; this trail leads to a dead end-there's someplace else you have to be." He paused to nervously puff on his cigarette. "Pierpont," he then stated in a plume of smoke. "I was told you would recognise that name."

"Pierpont?" Mireille parroted, frowning in puzzlement. Kirika was no less perplexed-Pierpont-or rather, Simon Pierpont-the horrible boy she had visited with her love unfortunately on more than one occasion. What did he have to do with the false Noir? Had he somehow tracked them down?

"Yeah. Pierpont," Jacques confirmed. "And that's all I was told. So now I guess I should take my leave. This place is gonna be crawling with cops pretty damn soon anyway… that is-" He grinned at Millet, provoking a scowl from his 'boss', and then flicked his cigarette at the bar. It sailed over it and vanished behind the structure, flames suddenly erupting like some sort of incandescent plant life where it had landed out of sight. The fire spread quickly with all the potent liquor that had been splattered haphazardly about the bar, and in moments it had become an unbridled bonfire, the peaks of the pyre clawing upwards to scrape the ceiling charcoal. "-if the Fire Department doesn't get here first."

"You're a walking corpse," Millet swore in a low, dangerous voice, his headquarters literally going up flames around him. "You'll never be able to walk the streets of this city again without always looking over your shoulder. I'll see to it."

"Look around; this place is finished," Jacques chuckled, unafraid. "*You're* finished." He then nodded in parting to Mireille, his eyes passing for an instant over Kirika-who had yet to lower her gun from his chest despite his claims of being on her and her partner's side; he was still Soldats, after all-before he turned around and began to walk to the front doors of the building, his prior entrance into the room via the rear of the curtains now an impassable firestorm.

"Oh, one more thing, Richard," Jacques said, looking back over his shoulder. "Did you know you're in the company of Noir? I mean the *real* Noir." The Soldats agent grinned smugly. It was the grin of a winner. "Like I said; you're finished," he concluded, and then resumed casually heading towards the exit, putting his hands in his pants' pockets. Kirika waited only until he had departed before she at last repositioned her Beretta, moving it to accompany Mireille's Walther in watching over their prisoner.

"Noir…" Millet whispered, Jacques duplicity forgotten and his ire deserting him in the face of fear. "It can't be…."

Kirika noted that this time Mireille did not deny the allegation. "You mentioned before that it was just business between us," the blonde instead reminded him emotionlessly. "You were wrong."

Millet's head snapped back and banged against the edge of the stage as a 9mm Parabellum slug brutally invaded his cranium at close range and tore out the opposite side. A streak of blood containing very dark red, almost black, coagulated lumps plastered the floor of stage behind the dead man's head, while more of the substance dripped like syrup from part of the golden railing lining the semi-circular structure and the adjoining catwalk.

Kirika let her arms fall to her sides with Millet's demise and looked at Mireille as the woman did the same, relaxing her posture. She wondered what her love had meant by her final words to Millet. But the petite girl supposed it didn't really matter; Millet was dead now. And his entire syndicate was dead too, if the number of bodies littering the vicinity were any indication. There could still be a few lingering survivors, but for all intents and purposes the small criminal organisation had been wiped out with its leader.

Kirika looked away from Mireille and gazed around the room, surveying the massacre that she'd had a substantial hand in. She had slain a lot of people tonight, but she had done so with no hesitation, with no misgivings. She had simply done what she'd had to do to protect Mireille's life; she had done what was necessary to honour her oath…. And that was to kill. This fight had not been like the previous one where Kirika had faltered, even if it was only for a moment. This time she'd had no such reluctance and furthermore she felt no remorse for the fallen sinners. This experience had been a test for her-a test whether she was truly devoted to Odette Bouquet's last words-and she had passed it. A murderer Kirika may be, but she was a murderer with virtuous intent.

[And that makes all the difference, doesn't it…?]

Kirika returned her soft brown eyes to Mireille and was a little surprised to see that the woman was looking at her. Seeing that she had the girl's attention, the blonde then motioned with a gentle tilt of her head back to the hallway connecting to the room. It was time to go. There was no need for Mireille to declare where they were going next, either-Simon Pierpont's place of residence. Kirika was not looking forward to it.

Where Jacques had taken the direct course using the front doors to vacate the burning building, Kirika and Mireille opted to use the proven route they had navigated to infiltrate it earlier-it was a path they were familiar with, and hence was the wisest to choose. If the two assassins were to be waylaid by any leftovers of Millet's syndicate while leaving the group's headquarters it would be to their advantage if they knew the layout of the combat zone. It was also that possible danger that encouraged Kirika and her partner to keep their weapons firmly in their hands as they walked.

As Kirika crossed the threshold into the corridor that eventually led out of the building, she peered back over her shoulder. The fires that had been consuming the stage's crimson curtains and the wrecked bar had crept away from their birthplaces in search of fresh nourishment, half the room now lost in an intense inferno. Flames climbed the walls and crawled along the floor, and most of the stage was alight, the carcasses of several gangsters lying there granted an impromptu cremation in their former headquarters. Kirika doubted whether the Fire Brigade would be able to save the building from being completely gutted by the raging conflagration. But maybe that was fitting; it had been a lair of sinners-Hell had come to claim its own.

And now Kirika and her love were departing that fiery, wicked domain; leaving behind its citizens also. A demon and an angel, side by side, partners against the darkness… and partners in life. Once they stepped outside into the cool night air, they would be bestowed a reprieve from their near constant war, even if it could never be a lasting one. Pseudo peace would be theirs.

And then of course the hope would come, the dream that the peace could endure forever more, that tomorrow it would all be over, just a nightmare woken up from. Or at least that was how Kirika felt. One day that dream would be realised. One day. But not today.

Mireille's blue eyes turned surreptitiously to Kirika as they travelled together down the corridor, stepping over the bodies of the men they had killed beforehand. A small smile formed on her beautiful face, one of barely controlled mirth if the introverted girl read it accurately.

"You looked… good… swinging on that pole back there," Mireille remarked matter-of-factly, her smile growing.

"Hm?" Kirika uttered in bewilderment as she looked at her love, her countenance similarly mystified. The blonde's amusement appeared to have doubled now, although the girl hadn't a clue as to why. Maybe Mireille was thinking of a funny joke. Not that Kirika ever understood any of them. On the numerous times her partner had attempted to explain them to her all the woman had done was cause her to feel even more baffled-she was starting to believe that perhaps Mireille had an odd sense of humour. She did seem to enjoy dressing Kirika up in a variety of clothes for some reason, after all; why couldn't her sense of humour be likewise affected?

In any case, it didn't matter what Mireille was thinking-or what she took pleasure in, either, regardless of how strange it was-as long as she was happy. As long as she enjoyed the fleeting peace as much as Kirika herself did.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

I decided to give Kirika something to hold her ammunition clips in when she wears outfits with no pockets. She can't very well shove magazines in the waistband of her skirt now, can she? That's where her gun goes. ^_^

Also, I figured Kirika has to be pretty strong. She did use an M16 once and handled the recoil effortlessly, plus breaking necks isn't exactly easy.


	13. Casualties of War

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The thirteenth chapter. There's some lengthy character development and plot up ahead that I had to reveal (at least partially). Like in most anime shows, every character has an angsty back-story. ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 13 - Casualties of War

Dominique D'Aubigne reshuffled today's reports into two neat stacks on her polished chrome desk, having just finished her initial cursory browse through them for anything out of the ordinary. One pile's topics were of the bland, innocuous, variety-manufacturing schedules and the progress thus far for this month's batch of medicinal products; the amounts of assorted raw ingredients expended and which ones needed to be replenished; new wholesalers to be added to the merchandise delivery rosters-the list was almost endless. However its counterpart's subject matters belonged to a business that was entirely more illegitimate than Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals' public industry-an ugly twin. That other pile contained illicit information, including a second manufacturing schedule for the latest batch of 'recreational' drugs the company produced on the sly, the current prices of the popular narcotics and amphetamines being circulated around the streets of Yokohama and the rest of the Kanagawa prefecture at the moment, and which specific 'products' the criminal organisations under Ishinomori control needed restocked so that they could continue to perform their assigned duty of distribution and sale. And that was just a minute sample of what the stack contained-the list of reports concerning Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals' illegal activities was, like its mate, also virtually never-ending.

It was as one might expect from a multinational corporation operating dual enterprises, however. Two businesses running in parallel did tend to create an abundance of paperwork on a daily basis, and it wasn't as if either was any less genuine than the other; both required likewise consideration. Just because one such business was against the law didn't mean it was to be treated any differently than its partner; it merely had to have some of its own unique trade practices applied to it. Business was business.

Moreover, it was what Dominique did and had been doing for many, many years. She was accustomed to sifting through mounds of documents made from enough paper to level a forest, her keen eyes singling out the relevant details from the pages while her sharp wits processed them, deliberating on what action was called for in relation to the data, if any. She would even go so far as to say she enjoyed it. It was stark and logical work, but that was what appealed to Dominique; she liked losing herself in the monotony of the facts and figures. Her mental faculties became focused exclusively on her task while everything else just flitted away into the background of her mind, where it was forgotten for a time. During that period when her thoughts were dedicated to uncluttered down-to-earth analysis, Dominique turned into an emotionless and empty being, a woman who felt and was absolutely nothing, who possessed no past, who had no memories-she simply existed. Dominique became a woman at peace, as short as that peace lasted. But the peace was counterfeit, a product of her dissociation from her mind and its reflections, not one originating from her heart. Dominique's heart no longer had the capability to ever be at peace.

While Dominique continued to toil and generate sound advice in regards to the management of Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals, these days it fell on apathetic ears, leaving her predominantly in control of the conglomerate's operations. Kaede was the CEO and chief owner of the company, but she had little interest in its functions and affairs as long as it went on earning money to fund the crusade against Soldats. The child only listened to Dominique's news and counsel on the war and nothing else. Perhaps that was for the best, though. Kaede's obsession for vengeance against the clandestine organisation practically consumed her every waking moment; she would have no mentality for the tedium of corporate matters even if she were willing to take an involved role in the supervision of the firm. And so then it was left to Dominique to seize hold of the reins to her family's business and steer it along the correct course on her behalf.

It wasn't as if the advisor turned stand-in company president minded in the least, however. She was suited to the job. Dominique knew the workings of Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals better than anyone alive-the rest who had were gone, now-and in addition possessed the drive to keep the company flourishing for as long as humanly possible. It had been *her* company, *her* legacy; it even had her name attached to it. If it continued to stay afloat, then a part of her would always remain thriving in this world-a form of immortality… or so Dominique liked to believe sometimes in her moments of weakness. In reality a financial empire of lifeless glass and steel proved to be a vastly poor substitute to the vibrant flesh and blood woman who had once sat at its head, and provided about as much comfort as cold hard cash did to a lonely heart.

Dominique pushed her glasses up further on the bridge of her nose from where they had slipped down with a finger, and then straightened her posture in her high-backed black leather chair, her eyes straying away from the desk and the heaps of paper resting on its metallic surface. Her frosty green gaze wandered around her office, its modern and austere design of rigid steel panels and shiny silver doors a predominant theme throughout the interior of Ishinomori tower. The multistorey building was sleek and sexy, cold and unfeeling; a forbidding tower that stood erect almost at the centre of the harbour city of Yokohama, a fortress beyond any other castle that had ever graced this ancient land before it, one that could dissuade would-be raiders from the sheer thought of invasion with a mere glimpse of its unforgiving reinforced walls. It fitted its part as the headquarters for the powerful empire that had the strength of will to oppose another, larger, and tyrannical one. It was the solitary bastion that stood against the corrupt group that Soldats had become, and was the staging point for the impending revolution that would cleanse its ranks.

A bittersweet smile gently grew on Dominique's face as her eyes inescapably came to fall upon the bright, garish paintings that adorned the silver walls of her office, standing out prominently against the contrastingly lacklustre steel panels. They were abstract pictures, the kind that resembled an untamed mess of colour as if the artist had made each brushstroke purely on a whim. They were most certainly not to Dominique's refined and practical predilections… yet she adored them nonetheless. Not for their art, but because they were wild, undisciplined, passionate-so like *her*. Dominique could still recall vividly when the enchanting white-haired woman had hung them up, citing that the dull office was horribly dreary and that her friend would became depressed if she had to stare at plain chrome walls all day long. Perhaps that was the actual reason Dominique was fond of the paintings; because Hikaru had picked them out and arranged them around the office with her own two hands. She remembered that she hadn't really liked them very much at all until after her lover had passed away. Now she couldn't bear the thought of removing the pictures, despite the pain looking at them everyday brought.

Dominique's eyes drifted to the framed photograph sitting near one corner of her desk, as they often were inclined to do when her disposition became wistful. It was a picture of her and Hikaru when they were younger, a snapshot of happier times that could never be recaptured. In it the two women stood sedately next to each other on a cheerful backdrop of green grass and blue skies, their shoulders touching, and with mirroring demure smiles curling their lips. But in spite of the two figures' reserved expressions the depths of their eyes gleamed with joy and contentment, the bliss they had felt at the time shining through the glass of the picture frame; an echo from the past. Dominique and Hikaru were both garbed in business suits in the photograph-the latter in white, the former in contrary black. It was an accurate visual representation of how they had lived. Their personalities had been poles apart, direct opposites of one another. Hikaru had been the flighty, creative type; her head stuck in the clouds oft times, while Dominique had been the sensible, logical one with her feet firmly on the ground and who served to anchor her counterpart when necessary. Dominique and Hikaru had been a match made in heaven-*true* soulmates-two halves that had made a whole. They had completed one another.

Of course, it hadn't always been that way. When Dominique and Hikaru had first met as commerce students studying in Paris, the darkhaired woman had regarded her future love as incredibly flaky and irritating to no end; someone whose chirpy company she had found sickening and hardly tolerable to be in for any lengthy period of time. They had been so different, so unalike in manner and temperament. But it was said that opposites attract, and in this case the saying had rang true. In spite of her poor first impressions of the woman, before Dominique knew it she and Hikaru had become inseparable and the very best of friends. Not a day had went by when they didn't see each other or spend time together; sharing classes and cramming for exams, or enjoying the pleasant diversions the capitol city had to offer. Hikaru inadvertently became the sole light in Dominique's otherwise rather dismal life, her upbeat nature tearing down the dark webs that had normally ensnared the French woman's hardened heart. Hikaru's sheer presence had made Dominique feel and become a better person.

After they had graduated, Hikaru had invited her best friend to migrate to Japan with her and help manage the Ishinomori family corporation that she was taking over chief ownership of from her ailing mother. It had been a proposal that Dominique had most readily accepted. She'd had no cause to remain in France; she'd had no family of her own or any other obligations to keep her in the country. Moreover, the notion of being parted from Hikaru had lain heavy on her heart and mind; regardless of what had been in France for Dominique she would have still forsaken everything to accompany her friend. By then she had developed a deep attachment to the Japanese beauty, one she eventually recognised as pure and unconditional love.

Yet Dominique ignored her feelings for Hikaru and chose instead to bottle them up secretly inside her heart. She had known that her cherished friend did not possess the same sentiments as she herself did and furthermore she hadn't wanted to risk jeopardising the close relationship they already had. And so the years ticked by, Dominique acting as Hikaru's personal assistant and advisor for the workings of Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals, and also as her devoted best friend and companion… but nothing more. It had been somewhat saddening for Dominique to hide her love for Hikaru, but simply being near the woman's radiant spirit had been enough to placate her aching heart. In time Dominique-who had been born into the covert worldwide society known as Soldats, and desiring to have no secrets between herself and Hikaru bar the one that dwelled in the left side of her chest-introduced her friend to the organisation and to Altena, a visionary who the darkhaired woman greatly admired and whose beliefs she fervently agreed with. To Dominique's delight and relief, Hikaru grew to become a faithful supporter of Altena, and in turn put the fears she'd had that her love would reject the group and her with it to rest.

But then *he* showed up. Shinichi Sakamoto. A Soldats follower of the current warped order… and the disgusting man who by some perverted twist of fate stole Hikaru's heart. It had been an utter chance encounter between the two during a scheduled gathering of all the prominent Soldats members residing in the Kanto territory, but that was all it took for 'love' to blossom. Despite Dominique's ardent labours to get her friend to return to her senses, within a year of meeting each other Hikaru and Shinichi wed. Shinichi, being the weak man that he had been, had taken Hikaru's surname in respect to her more powerful family, and consequently the union was seen by all as the Sakamoto lineage marrying into the Ishinomori clan, not the other way around.

Dominique and Hikaru became rather distant after the loathsome wedding, the French woman nursing a broken heart that bled a furious hatred into her soul for her lost love's husband, a hatred that placed her at odds with the object of her affection on many instances. More years past, and Hikaru birthed two children, a daughter and son, while in the meantime Dominique descended further and further into a bleak depression as hate and despair consumed her. So caught up in her self-pity, she never noticed that Hikaru was slowly changing, too… and also for the worse. Shinichi had been a pathetic, craven man, who ultimately developed a fierce resentment for his wife and her superior status as the head of the Ishinomori family. Although he was Hikaru's husband, she was deemed as the genuine strength behind the clan. Shinichi was merely a ceremonial figurehead; he had no real authority beyond what his wife elected to give him, like tossed food scraps from the table. As a result, he had seen himself as not much better than one of Hikaru's subordinates, which had galled him terribly. Whatever affection he had held for Hikaru-which couldn't have been anywhere near the degree the divine woman had been worthy of, considering-was replaced by bitterness that he regularly made apparent to his blameless spouse. Hikaru had been a delicate flower in full bloom when Dominique had first formed a close-knit friendship with her, but Shinichi's perceived self-inadequacies effectively trampled her already withering spirit into the ground, petals crushed callously beneath his heel as they shrivelled up in an effort to protect themselves from the abuse. The playful and energetic woman Dominique had known and loved deteriorated into a mere shell of her former self.

However, Hikaru's torment-while it had torn at Dominique's heart and soul when she had finally learned of it-ended up being a blessing in disguise. Following months of suffering in silence, Hikaru eventually sought aid for her troubles from her dejected best friend and business advisor... and also sought solace in her old college friend's arms. Dominique wasn't precisely sure how it had happened-one minute they had been talking, the next Hikaru had been embracing her tightly, gazing imploringly into her eyes before kissing her softly on the lips-but it hadn't really mattered; the dream she had believed hopeless with her love's marriage had been at last realised. When Hikaru had revealed her feelings for Dominique that had evidently surfaced under Shinichi's mistreatment, the misery that had polluted the darkhaired woman had instantly been lifted. She had eagerly returned her friend's kiss-their first of countless-and confirmed what her heart had always felt for her fair-haired and pale-skinned angel. It had been like the conclusion of a fairytale; a happy ending at last after years of pain, long unrequited love made a joyous reality.

But there had been one obstacle to Dominique and Hikaru's newfound romantic relationship-Shinichi. Hikaru had still had a husband; that she loved someone else and felt nothing for him hadn't changed that fact. Divorce hadn't been an option; it would have split the Ishinomori Empire in two-while Shinichi hadn't had any real standing in the family, he'd yet had his legal rights. Hikaru had opted to entice him to voluntarily leave the clan and annul their marriage vows with a hefty cash settlement, but as Dominique had predicted the man had been greedy and had wanted at the very least half of his wife's assets. Shinichi had been of the new age Soldats breed, after all.

No, the only path Dominique had seen for the love she shared with Hikaru to come to complete, unrestrained fruition was if Shinichi were to die. Hikaru had been against it at first-she had still retained her compassion in spite of her husband's maltreatment-but Dominique had know that it had to be done. It had been times like then when she had to step in and do what her kind hearted angel could not. And step in Dominique had. Disposing of Shinichi had been a relatively simple affair; he was a notable member of Soldats but not high enough in the hierarchy to have a thorough investigation launched into his death, so an arranged 'accident' was sufficient. Through Hikaru's underlings Dominique discreetly had Shinichi's car wind up wrapped around an unyielding lamppost one night with the man inside, and then the issue of her lover's husband had been quietly resolved, leaving them free to pursue their feelings. Hikaru hadn't shed so much as a tear for her spouse following his passing, but while she had not mourned the loss of the man she had mourned his death nonetheless-her face betrayed the grieve she had felt that it had come to murder to escape him. Dominique had consoled her however, and the Japanese woman swiftly recovered and equally as quickly forgot about her disastrous marriage.

And then that should have been the end of it. Dominique and Hikaru should have lived on happily ever after together, as the conclusions of fairytales usually go. And they had, for a while at any rate. Hikaru gradually reverted back to her cheerful self once again with her best friend Dominique as her lover, and the French woman herself became considerably more light-hearted thanks to her partner's infectious disposition. Hikaru even had insisted that Dominique take a more active role in her daughter and son's lives too, which the darkhaired woman had complied with, although she had been careful to hide the nature of her relationship with their mother. While their romantic association was common knowledge to Ishinomori family vassals, they chose to keep it concealed from Kaede and Ryosuke since neither had been sure how the two-who had been teenagers at the time-would handle the realisation that their mother, in spite of being a widow, was bedding someone who wasn't their father and another woman at that. Hikaru had wished to tell them once they were a little older when they could perhaps understand better, and subsequently truly accept Dominique as a surrogate parent. It had been just one of Dominique and Hikaru's many plans for the future; a future so bright, so promising… and one that had been tragically cut short.

The memory of that nightmarish day still burned clearly in Dominique's mind, a permanent tattoo that marred it like a festering wound that never seemed to heal. It hurt intensely to recollect the events, and yet she inexorably did so whenever she was left unoccupied with her thoughts for too long, as if she had a masochistic urge to remind herself of why she was alone here today. It had been just another meeting, Dominique and Hikaru travelling by car with their regular escorts to a business appointment related to Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals. A simple thing, really. But then the simplicity of the situation had abruptly altered as their car had suddenly been overwhelmed with gunfire from all sides. An ambush from nearby rooftops, Dominique had later learned. The tires had gone first with almost four simultaneous bangs, sending their vehicle veering wildly off the road and to a violent stop lodged halfway in a bus shelter, the screech of twisting metal from the impact akin to otherworldly shrieks of pain. Next the driver had been taken out where he had sat stunned behind the wheel-as extra insurance that the car would be halted, Dominique's shaken mind had hazily surmised at the time-followed by the bodyguard adjacent to him in the front passenger seat. Then the gunmen had turned their attention to the two women who had still been breathing in the backseat. And then Dominique's world had been brought to an end.

Thinking back now, Dominique should have seen it coming. Hikaru had always been the selfless one between them; where Dominique was rather self-centred when it came to anything but her lover, her Japanese counterpart more than made up for her deficiency. But on that day, the white-haired woman's benevolent nature had led to her downfall. Before Dominique had registered what her partner's intentions had been, Hikaru's body had been thrown over hers, pushing her down flat on the backseat. In that fraction of a second between the car crash and when the gunfire had been redirected to them by the assassins, Hikaru had decided to use her own body to shield Dominique from the incoming hail of bullets, to accept all of the pain and suffer in her lover's place.

The Ishinomori family bodyguards in the other two cars that had made up their small convoy had ultimately fought off the gunmen, but for Hikaru and Dominique their achievement had arrived too late. Dominique had held her best friend and the love of her life in her lap that afternoon, watching on with agonising helplessness as she bled away her last. Hikaru had said nothing as she had lain dying, instead simply smiling up at the French woman with tearful violet eyes. There had been no final words, no declarations of everlasting love… but then there hadn't been a need of any. Both women had known how they had felt about one another, right until the very last moment.

Hikaru had gently slipped away from Dominique shortly afterwards. She had died in her arms, ascending to Heaven to become the angel she had already been in life. Dominique had felt like she had died, too, except her spirit had instead descended into her own private Hell. She hadn't been able to comprehend that the woman she had loved and adored for most of her life was dead. Hikaru had been the sole person who had ever touched her heart, who had ever stirred her soul… she had been her first and only love. To lose her was on par with dying herself. They had barely had two years together as lovers; so brief, an ephemeral moment in time. Dominique had realised then that their fairytale had never actually ended when they had shared their first kiss; it had just begun. But it had ended there in the wrecked car that day, when two joint hearts had died as one.

The time that had passed after Hikaru's death had seemed surreal to Dominique, as if she were living in a dream. But then she had been-and still was-a dead woman living beyond her days. The world became dull to her, and she listless, the shock that Hikaru was gone still not quite sinking in, even years later. Dominique had dwelled on suicide several times, but she had yet had ties to life-Hikaru's business, and her children. As well as the thirst for vengeance.

Through her contacts in Soldats, Dominique had discovered that the attack that had claimed her lover's life had been a sanctioned hit ordered by the council themselves. Out of fear of Altena's imminent commencement of Le Grand Retour, the spineless Soldats council had decided to take out any influential members of the noble woman's enclave they could as a form of pre-emptive strike to delay the ritual; a list that Hikaru Ishinomori had apparently topped. Once Dominique had learned that the corrupt order of Soldats had been responsible for the murder of her lover, renewed vigour had surged into her spirit, fuelled by cold fury. There would be plenty of time to die after Soldats had fallen and been reborn… after they had paid for their unforgivable sin.

Dominique closed her eyes-the orbs stinging with unshed tears beneath their lids-blocking out the sight of the photograph. She then swivelled her chair around to face the large set of windows behind her, opening her eyes again to take in the view of Yokohama in the early morning sunlight, what had been the preliminary battleground-now conquered-for the war. And it was a war. Dominique was fighting the good fight, striving to do what Altena could not-initiate Le Grand Retour and see it through to completion. Make no mistake, however; she wasn't doing it for the deceased visionary. This was for Hikaru; this was retribution. The new order of Soldats were evidently extremely afraid of returning to the old ways-of being purified-and Dominique knew that was the key to fulfilling her vengeance.

But she wasn't as reckless as Altena had been to place all her hopes in the Black Hands of Soldats-Noir. It would take more than a mere two assassins to rid the globe of the present tainted incarnation of Soldats; it would take a force of immeasurable might. Furthermore the current embodiment of Noir was too volatile; the duo had after all been the ones who had killed the self-professed 'Kind Mother' and most of her followers with her, trouncing her ambitions. Noir was purely a symbolic representation of Le Grand Retour. Yet it was a vital one nevertheless.

The ceremonial significance of the Eternal Darkness was the precise purpose of Ryosuke and his nauseatingly chauvinistic friend's being in Paris, France, at this very moment. There was an item residing in the possession of a Soldats member in the city that had been taken as an apparent souvenir from the Manor following Altena's demise and before Dominique's operatives could spirit it away; an item that was necessary for any replacement Noir that was named by her in the future to hold water and be regarded as official. Ryosuke and Vincent had been charged to find and retrieve that precious object. However, the French woman had always known where it was being kept, but she'd had her reasons for withholding the knowledge. In fact it wasn't until about an hour ago when she had at last disclosed the item's location to Ryosuke via telephone.

Ryosuke, while being of Hikaru's blood, regrettably had inherited none of his magnificent mother's qualities bar some of her fine looks-he essentially took after his wretched father. And, like his father, he appeared to share in Shinichi's dislike of Dominique and her past close familiarity with Hikaru. When he had still been alive to plague both Hikaru and Dominique's existences with his vile presence, the spiteful man had visibly begrudged his wife's then platonic relationship with the French woman on whatever grounds his feeble brain had conjured up, be it out of typical male possessiveness for his spouse or simply plain envy at her warm rapport with her friend.

But in Ryosuke's particular case, his loathing of Dominique was based on something greater than the advisor's prior chaste friendship with his mother. Even though Hikaru and Dominique had strived hard to maintain the confidentiality of their romantic association subsequent to Shinichi's demise, Ryosuke had unfortunately stumbled upon the pair whilst they had been locked in a compromising position-their arms enfolded lovingly around one another's necks while they engaged in a passionate kiss. Naturally, the two women's attentions had been immersed wholly in their intimate activities, and thus neither had noticed that they had been caught 'in the act'-in a manner of speaking-until the inferences the teenage Ryosuke had drawn from his first glimpse had been permanently engraved in his mind, unalterable regardless of what Hikaru or Dominique had then said to the contrary after the fact.

Ryosuke had not taken his newly discovered insight in a favourable fashion, going so far as to abandon his mother and her supposed 'replacement' lover in disgust, taking refuge in Yokohama's criminal underworld. Hikaru had been inconsolable at this betrayal, weeping day and night for her wayward and impetuous firstborn. This pain had been compounded soon after when Kaede had left to join him, missing her elder brother although Dominique couldn't imagine why. Later Hikaru had tried to reconcile with Ryosuke on numerous occasions, but he never paid the woman's pleadings any consideration at all; the heartless, ungrateful child. Hikaru had gone to her grave thinking that her son had despised her. Dominique still hadn't forgiven him for that malicious wrongdoing.

The deep-seated animosity between Dominique and Ryosuke persisted to this day. Both continually vied for Kaede's full trust, the child having inherited virtually total leadership and tenure of the Ishinomori Empire. Many times Ryosuke had beseeched his more important sister to dismiss the French 'interloper' from her primary position as advisor and personal assistant to the CEO in the family's company, before he'd realised that his efforts were being wasted. Hikaru hadn't left Dominique any portion of her substantial empire in her Will on the basis that her lover wasn't actually a member of her family-although the darkhaired woman knew for certain that she had considered her as one-but as a alternative she had made it fundamentally clear that the person who had been her best friend and partner in life was to remain where she was at Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals indefinitely and without question. With his late mother's parting wishes essentially safeguarding Dominique's place in the empire, a frustrated Ryosuke had been rendered powerless-Kaede was not apt to undermine Hikaru's biddings; she regarded her mother's last words as unbreakable law.

However, the assurance of Dominique continuing to play her role as Kaede's assistant and advisor for the foreseeable future did not stop the battle of wills she and Ryosuke relentlessly fought in. Deploying the ex-yakuza clansman and his lout of a companion in Paris with the task of hunting down and retrieving the item stolen from the Manor that Dominique needed was that latest such clash… and in this specific conflict the elder competitor had prevailed almost utterly. With Ryosuke out of her hair, the advisor had been able to further her own plans for the Ishinomori Empire and ensconce herself deeper into Kaede's good graces without the boy's irksome meddling to hinder her.

Yet this had been a mere secondary goal to Dominique. In addition to charging Ryosuke and his womanising idiot of a friend to find and bring the sacred artefact to Japan, she had arranged it so that they had adopted the alias of the famed Noir while abroad, under the pretence that the name would unlock doors for them in Paris that would normally have to be blown open with blazing guns. It had been easy to persuade them to follow her request and utilise the age-old title; they had been relatively sheltered living in the Asia-Pacific region from the tales of Europe's thousand-year-old Eternal Darkness; indeed, they had never even heard of the legendary assassin duo. Little had Ryosuke and Vincent known that the genuine purpose for their use of the designation was to attract the attention of French Soldats operatives, and perhaps even the true Noir who Dominique was aware were lying dormant in Paris. It had been her hope that the name would ultimately bring more harm than good, and that enemies would harry Ryosuke and Vincent throughout their search. And if one of them were to die-with preference to Shinichi's spawn, but either was fine-then that would be perfectly all right as well.

But Dominique knew that that outcome would be a stretch. It wasn't as if Ryosuke and Vincent were mere two-bit hooligans lacking any talent in the martial variety, no matter what she liked to imagine them as. Moreover, if both were to somehow be killed, Dominique wouldn't obtain the object that was currently in Soldats hands she desired. The risk-albeit small, unless the true Noir awakened from their torpor to defend their rightful pseudonym-that Ryosuke *and* Vincent died during their mission was what had eventually compelled Dominique to phone Shinichi's son and inform him that the artefact was in the custody of Albert Laroque, a reasonably prominent Soldats follower of the new order. Laroque was a well-known aficionado of antiques and rare texts, and his estate in Paris boasted a sizable collection of such things within its walls-including the relic Dominique wanted. Obviously the security at his dwellings would be severe indeed, but the woman was quite confident that Ryosuke and Vincent would succeed in liberating what she sought. After all, due to Dominique's influence Kaede also pined for the artefact, and what she wanted her older brother got for her. Despite his customary taciturn countenance, it was plain to see that Ryosuke was completely besotted with his younger sister. It wasn't surprising, however; Kaede Ishinomori truly was a beautiful, captivating, and lovely child in all respects.

Dominique slowly closed her eyes and allowed her posture to sag, slouching back into her chair. She smiled faintly as her thoughts turned to Kaede, her exquisite charge, the only aspect of her wretched life that gave her joy. While Ryosuke was his father's son, Kaede was most definitely her mother's daughter. She was the near spitting image of Hikaru in her younger years, the lone disparity her shorter hairstyle. Conversely their personalities were somewhat different. Kaede's mind was a little… unbalanced, which Dominique deduced was the woeful product that the trauma of losing her wonderful mother at an early age had brought-the French woman was familiar with the horrific pain the child was experiencing firsthand. As a result, Kaede-through no fault of her own-possessed a nasty streak that frequently manifested itself characteristically in displays of ferociously violent behaviour. Yet Dominique had witnessed the compassion she had too, the compassion that Hikaru's heart had contained while it had still beat. She knew that deep down inside Kaede was her *real* self, her real persona that only every so often made its appearance with acts of unexpected kindness. Nevertheless, Dominique adored every facet of Hikaru's daughter, and that sentiment even incorporated her more… exotic… traits.

And besides, those aggressive attributes of Kaede were a benefit to the campaign against Soldats, their *mutual* campaign against Soldats. Kaede wholeheartedly concurred with her assistant's hunger to avenge Hikaru's murder, although her vengeance also encompassed paying back Soldats for her father's death on top of that-she was under the impression that Shinichi was assassinated by the group as well as her mother; an erroneous fact that Dominique was responsible for. It wouldn't do to have Kaede know the truth, after all. In any case, her parents' slayings were what fed her fires of retribution, fires that raged like an inferno inside her as apposed to Dominique's icy artic blizzard. To Dominique revenge was a dish best served cold-the colder the better in fact. And at least one of them had to keep a level head in this war. It was Dominique's duty to provide Kaede with proper objective council, along with cooling her blazing spirit when it grew too unruly. It was much like the times when she'd had to compose Hikaru's spirit during the periods it became overly whimsical. Yes, Kaede certainly was her mother's daughter. They were so alike. So alike….

Dominique's eyes opened and sat up straight-her smile gone-before she rather briskly spun her black chair around to face her desk, stopping it abruptly in place with her feet. She then simply stared at the surface of the desk for a few moments, although she saw none of its contents, before shutting her eyes briefly and exhaling softly. Nothing good came of when she was left alone with just her own mind for company. Furthermore reflecting on the events of the past was a meaningless endeavour; a misuse of one's time, time better spent on worthwhile undertakings. Yes. All that thinking about the past led to was grief and pain, grief and pain that fostered errant thoughts.

Dominique shook her head slightly and sighed again. Grief and pain. A pity she couldn't stop reminiscing in spite of her awareness of those dual end products. What she needed was something to divert her mind's attention so that she could return to her calm, poised self; not this miserable woman she was here and now.

With that in mind, Dominique raised her head a little and reached over to lay her left hand on a yellow folder on her tidy desk, resting to one side of the two piles of business reports. It was relatively thin, but held yet more reports. Except that these reports were on the struggle against Soldats, the sort of material that Kaede was interested in.

Turning her gaze away from the folder, the advisor looked at the double doors off to her right where the CEO's office was located adjacent to hers. In addition to the reports on the war, Kaede would also want to hear the so-called good news that her 'Big Brother' was returning to Yokohama momentarily.

Dominique smiled to herself. It was all the more reason to pay the darling girl a visit. Getting up gracefully from her chair, the French woman-with folder in hand-stepped around from behind the desk and proceeded towards Kaede Ishinomori's office, with her mood already beginning to improve.

* * *

Mireille moved like a nimble cat on the prowl as she skulked swiftly down the narrow pitch-black alley where the entrance to Simon's computer shop was located, her footfalls on the old irregular cobblestones hushed and generating no telltale echoes an average person's would. But then she wasn't an average person. She lived her life by the sword-by the gun. For people like Mireille the night was when she thrived; it was her time, her realm. When darkness descended and shrouded the daylight world in its cloak of ebony, those of the black path truly awakened. Enveloped in the barren shadows that their lives were perpetually immersed in regardless of the hour, senses heightened and wits sharpened-nocturnal perceptions roused from their daytime slumber. After dusk the danger always seemed more real somehow-more tangible-that an assassin found herself or himself functioning in a state of highly acute awareness. Mireille wasn't exactly sure why that was, but nevertheless she had conjured up some theories during her idle moments. For the length of the night an assassin was a little closer to the dark paved road of murder they treaded upon-the gloom could be seen as a physical manifestation of the black path, and as such provided an intimacy that the warm sunlight flooded day could not reproduce. Simply put, a traveller of the path felt nearer to Death once the sun had set.

However, in Mireille's case she knew it was all basically just a frame of mind. She was no closer to the grave than any other moment in her life, the likely hazardous undertaking she was presently engaged in notwithstanding. The day was wrought with more or less the same perils as night. Perhaps the actual cause of her sensitised psychological condition was that the shadows had the potential to harbour any number and degree of threats-it was the fresh abundance of unknown factors that were responsible for the increased anxiety. Nevertheless, one did have to be on their utmost alert when general visibility was reduced; the intensified cautiousness was not misplaced.

Or maybe it was really because Mireille was heading into a situation along with Kirika that she did not find appealing a single bit. Being coerced into dealing with two of Soldats' enemies by a high ranking official like Breffort was one thing, but following the proposal of his *apparent* lackey was quite the other. The Corsican couldn't be sure that the man she and her partner had encountered in Slick Chicks honestly was part of Breffort's faction in Soldats. While Mireille was almost completely positive that 'Jacques' was a member of the worldwide society-he knew details about the group as well as certain specifics regarding her and Kirika's involvement with Breffort not to be, and furthermore possessing the knowledge that the two young women had been dubbed the true Noir awarded him extra credibility-she could not have the likewise confidence that he was under Breffort's jurisdiction. If the words of Mireille and Kirika's benefactor were to be considered sincere, the whole organisation of Soldats bar his division viewed the pair as unconditional if inactive foes. Consequently, it was entirely possible that Jacques worked for someone in Soldats other than Breffort; someone who had seen that the assassins were involving themselves in the clandestine group's affairs or at the very least returning to action, and as a result had made use of the offered opportunity to try and rub them out once and for all. Mireille didn't know what she and Kirika could expect to find in Simon's abode; Ryosuke and Vincent at large, a team of heavily armed Soldats agents lying in wait to ambush them, or simply a pimply-faced Simon and his unkempt associate playing inane computer games. If it turned out to be the latter, she mused how the hacker and Ezza would react when she and her fellow assassin burst in with guns drawn and at the ready. Whatever ensued, Simon would probably be less enthusiastic in his uncouth overtures towards Mireille thereafter.

Yet even if there hadn't been any doubt that Jacques was in the employ of Mireille and her partner's backer, the woman would still be approaching the situation with an exceedingly wary mind. It wasn't as if she trusted Breffort and his men much more than the rest of the detested organisation they belonged to. The only person who had the blonde's total faith was the svelte girl silently flanking her at this precise second. Any shred of lingering doubt she'd had regarding her colleague's mental state whilst in combat had utterly vanished with the darkhaired assassin's latest performance against Millet and his now eradicated syndicate. Kirika had apparently truly returned to her old self again, the self that had fought spiritedly alongside her in the Manor months ago.

Mireille stopped running and positioned herself with her back against the crumbling wall by the computer shop's door, Kirika mimicking her manoeuvre on the opposite side. The assassins' pistols were in their hands and fully loaded-lions with their lips rolled back and their sharp teeth bared. The silencers that had been affixed to them previously were removed now; beyond their preliminary advance, stealth wasn't necessary. This wasn't an assignment where Mireille and Kirika had to get in and out of a target's neighbourhood without a whisper. Besides, once they breached the entryway of Simon's domicile, there was a reasonably good chance they would be propelled immediately into a firefight. Entering through the main doorway wasn't exactly subtle.

As Mireille remained stationary leaning against the wall the cool night wind funnelled through the slender alley in a low whistle, as though howling in warning of what lay ahead. Meanwhile the woman's lavender coat and long flaxen locks flapped as they rode the chilly currents, being pulled away from the doorway as if in an attempt to hold her back, the breeze knowing something that the assassin did not. Yet what really invoked Mireille's discomfort was the tart odour that wafted up from her own body to irritate her nose courtesy of the draft, the pungent aroma reminding her that she probably gave the impression of a boozing drunk who had slopped more of her liquor on herself than she had ingested. Her clothing was still infused with the biting scent of the litres of alcohol that had been spilt on her during her stay behind the bar in Millet's strip club, the reek an unwelcome and seeming unfading memento of that occasion. Mireille rather disliked it when her appearance became dishevelled, but it often happened in the course of her rigorous vocation. While it had no major drawbacks per se, she simply was uncomfortable when garbed in dirty clothes or smeared with filth-she just didn't feel like herself. She couldn't wait until this night ended so she could return to the apartment and change out of her soiled garments, before showering thoroughly and ridding herself of the bitter stench that enveloped her.

Glancing over at Kirika across from her, Mireille briefly wondered if the girl could detect the smell. She wouldn't have been shocked if her partner could. Her eyesight and hearing were absolutely exceptional-why not her sense of smell on top of that to round off the extraordinary bundle?

Suddenly feeling a little more self-conscious about the odour clinging to her body than she would have liked, Mireille quickly decided that it was time to get the show on the road. Dropping her hand down to the dented metal knob attached to the door next to her, she carefully grasped the battered grey lump and began to turn it slowly, the mechanism emitting only the faintest of squeaks. She was hardly surprised when she encountered no resistance. The hour was late and she had thought that Simon would have closed his bootlegging business by now; that his door was still unlocked imparted credence to the first two hypothesises she had envisaged earlier. The prospect of a gunfight exploding on the other side of the door had just taken a step up.

Mireille raised her head from the doorknob and favoured Kirika with a final glance. The slim girl was a mere vague outline in the jet-black alley, almost insubstantial against the shadows surrounding her. It was as if the icy gust of wind that had travelled through the passageway moments before could have just blown her apart like a dust statue until she became impossible to tell apart from the murk, lost in its depths. The Corsican couldn't even hear the withdrawn girl breathe despite their relatively close proximity. Oddly, the sight was somewhat unnerving to Mireille and she found her glance unexpectedly transform into a prolonged stare.

"Mireille?" Kirika whispered, an ephemeral breath of air that gently floated to Mireille's ears.

Mireille instantly snapped out of her trance at the soft, sweet melody of Kirika's voice uttering her name. Correspondingly, her former thought was swept to the bottom of the swirling ocean that composed her mind, blending into the other currents of the ever-moving sea as new tides rose, engulfing it and taking its past place of dominance. By the time her partner had spoken the last syllable of her name she had already forgotten about the sight of Kirika standing in the dark, and the sentiment it had reared.

Mireille didn't answer Kirika's query, but instead cautiously pushed open the door to the shop with her hand, her mind now focused once again on what she and the girl had come here for, all other superfluous thoughts banished. She quickly pulled her arm back behind the cover of the wall as the door swung open with an audible creak of its hinges, lest the exposed limb receive a bullet from any alerted assailant or assailants who stood vigilant inside. Light spilled out from the opened doorway and into the darkened alley, but the assassins kept out of its borders, opting to remain lurking in the shadows while they listened intently for any hint of movement inside the building.

After it was clear that no barrage of gunfire was forthcoming, Mireille and Kirika both ventured a peek inside Simon's computer store façade, poking their heads past the doorjamb just enough to get a decent view of the interior. It took only a fraction of a second to realise that the room was empty, and appearing much the same as it had during their previous visits. But even so, neither Mireille nor Kirika judged the area as simply automatically safe to wander into. The images one's eyes afforded to you could be misleading, and to trust them implicitly was to dice with Death. Not until they had crossed the threshold and inspected every corner of the room could they deem it as clear and subsequently treat it as such.

Mireille drew back her head and straightened as Kirika did likewise, the young women meeting each other's gazes. The light escaping from the shop's open doorway touched their faces now, dipping one side in brightness while shadows streaked across the other, but bestowing enough illumination to lay bare their divergent features and expressions-fair and dark, stern and solemn. Yet despite their disparities both assassins possessed eyes that glimmered with the same hard resolve; blue and brown united in a single purpose.

Mireille lifted her Walther P99 up towards her chest and Kirika raised her Beretta M1934 in a similar fashion a second later, their weapons glinting dully in their hands. Kirika nodded to the blonde as she cocked the hammer of her firearm. They were set.

With that, Mireille dashed into the computer store, her head turning sharply to survey the blind spot to the right her initial glimpse inside had revealed, while her gun covered the region in front of her. Kirika followed in behind the woman an instant later, checking the left hand side of the room, her pistol remaining raised but motionless as she let her keen eyes scan over dusty shelves and tables laden with obsolete technology. It took less than two seconds to verify that the shop façade indeed did not contain a solitary soul save for the pair who had just rushed inside. That left only one other place to investigate.

Noticing that the basement door at the opposite end of the room was slightly ajar, Mireille wordlessly signalled to Kirika with a tilt of her head that they were proceeding onwards. The slip of a girl nodded her understanding, and then they both quietly trotted over to the door, each taking up a position on either side of it much like the arrangement they had adopted when faced with the alleyway entrance.

Mireille gingerly opened the basement door the rest of the way, and then hazarded a look inside. The wooden staircase that led down to the underground room where Simon's true enterprise was housed was as usual drenched in gloom, with the customary electric glow of buzzing computer monitors bathing a section of concrete floor at the bottom of the steps in a puddle of weak, pale light. From her vantage point above, the Corsican contract killer couldn't catch sight of any silhouettes in motion breaking what she could make out of the pool of light, but nor could she hear the chatting voices of immature teenagers or even the rapid tapping of strokes on a keyboard drifting up the stairs. Dead silence was all that was presented to her and her partner. It was the worst kind of silence.

After inhaling a deep breath to fortify herself-although she in reality needed no such bolstering-Mireille slinked through the doorway and started to tentatively descend the shadowy basement staircase, wincing slightly with every tiny groan the wooden planks made beneath her boots. She released the breath she held gradually and inaudibly as she treaded softly down the stairs, a calming action to help maintain her strict concentration so that she didn't inadvertently put too much of her weight on a step and betray her imminent arrival to any possible armed threats lying in wait below her. She sensed Kirika to her rear, but it was a purely instinctive awareness; she couldn't pick up the slightest physical sign of movement behind her. The shorter girl was extremely light on her feet, as if she walked on air itself, and her composure very seldom waned… excluding during special circumstances not unlike recent lamentable events, naturally. In spite of her stunted emotional development, Kirika's feelings did seem to govern her general wellbeing with considerably greater impunity than most people's did. Then again, perhaps her deficiency in that facet of herself was in fact to blame for the strong link. With such limited psychological maturity coupled with a subdued personality as a probable product of that, it could be no wonder Kirika sometimes reacted to certain things with quite different emotional responses than other girls her age did. Whatever the cause of the relation, all of this was material about her diminutive counterpart that Mireille was already conscious of, and already attempting to assuage… if that were possible. Altena's abuse had certainly inflicted considerable mental damage on poor Kirika, damage that may not be repairable. Still, Mireille would try.

By the time Mireille and Kirika reached the bottom of the steps, their feet hitting concrete, it was readily apparent that the basement hideaway of Simon was as devoid of life as the room overhead… but in a more literal sense. Once their roaming eyes had ensured that the dim light and dark crannies of the vicinity weren't concealing any enemies that had initially eluded their notice, their gazes were immediately drawn to the three unmoving bodies sprawled in a likewise number of varying positions across the middle of the basement. Mireille recognised one of them instantly by the tuft of faded green hair sprouting from the top of his head and by his resting place at his desk-Simon, with the remaining forms residing in the shadows surrounding him resembling Ezza and one of the two teens' seeming acquaintances. It was indisputably clear that all of them had met with rather violent, bloody ends.

The blonde woman sighed, relaxing her stance and lowering her gun as it dawned on her that she had overlooked a fourth scenario; Ryosuke and Vincent long departed but leaving behind Simon and anybody who had been with him at the time dead in their wake.

"They've gone," Kirika said as she followed Mireille's example and let her pistol drop to her side, easing the primed hammer of the weapon back to rest with her thumb.

"If they were even here at all," Mireille retorted, although there was little doubt in her mind that the basement bloodshed was the false Noir's handiwork. No other possibility made much sense. To her knowledge Simon didn't-or hadn't, as was the case now-mixed with the type of people-barring herself, of course-who would have had the brazenness to actually kill him and his associates, even if they'd had what they perceived as just motive to do so. The computer expert's clients had been college students and petty felons, not hardcore murderers. The Corsican was quite positive Soldats wasn't responsible either, since she didn't have a clue what the organisation would gain from killing a bunch of insignificant juvenile delinquents. That only left one other possibility, or more accurately *two*-Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu.

The real question was *why* they had done it. Moreover, why had they even troubled themselves with tracking down Simon in the first place? Why had they dragged their sorry carcasses out of whatever hole they had been hiding in just to find and kill him? Or had they made use of his special talents before slaying him? And, most importantly, where were Ryosuke and Vincent now?

Mireille bowed her head slightly and shut her eyes for a moment before sighing yet again, this time in annoyance. "How bothersome," she quietly remarked to herself. "Let's hope that they have left more for us than just an unsightly mess to sift through," she then said as she raised her head, speaking in a louder voice. "Their trail is getting colder by the minute; I'd like to prevent it from becoming as dead as the one at Millet's club apparently was."

Kirika turned her head to look at Mireille, and out of the corner of the blonde's eye she noticed that her partner's expression was strangely pensive, her mouth opening partly as if she wished to say something. But then a second later the introverted girl turned her gaze back to the three corpses in front of them and she nodded in acquiesce, a murmur of acknowledgement accompanying the gesture.

Mireille and Kirika walked deeper into the circle of feeble light emanating from the computer monitors, their pistols staying securely in their grips for safety's sake. They past by Simon's display tables packed with pirate CDs that were still neatly arranged in rows, untouched-further evidence that this had not been a robbery or anything of the like; it had been an execution. The woman with her partner in tow proceeded to the body that stood out the most, despite only lying partially in the light.

The corpse stretched out flat on its back off to the right of the network of computers was of Simon and Ezza's unknown acquaintance-a shabbily dressed male in his teenage years-and his cause of death was clearly identifiable. What remained of the boy was reclining in the vast majority of his body's own spilt blood, the source of which was the multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and a single one to the thigh. The body was quite frankly a gory ruin, a portrayal of overkill at its most gruesome. Whoever had carried out the murder had evidently revelled in the brutality of it. A stone cold killer they were not; this was the work of enthusiasm, zeal. The traits of an archetypical homicidal maniac.

"9mm casings," Kirika observed from beside Mireille, where the pair were situated a sensible foot away from the prolific blood splatters staining the floor. She pointed to a cluster of copper coloured hollow cylinders scattered about in the red pool, bathing in the result of their lethal payloads.

"Evidence of one half of our warped 'reflections' past presence here, perhaps," Mireille noted, recalling that one of their target's weapons of choice were two Beretta M92F Elites, which took 9mm ammunition. Yet it wasn't as if it were the sole model of gun that used such a bullet type. The calibre had a widespread utilisation across numerous makes of firearms all over the world. Nevertheless, when tied together with Jacques' alleged message from Breffort that had advised Mireille and Kirika to come here, the ejected casings were in support of the false Noir's involvement in Simon and his associates' deaths. Vincent, the wielder of the Elites, almost irrefutably held claim to this particular victim. A homicidal maniac indeed.

"The concrete walls must have muffled the shots," Mireille presumed as she looked up from the cadaver at the black ceiling above. Nonetheless, she didn't believe anyone would have come to the hacker's and his colleagues' rescue even if they had heard the gunfire. This neighbourhood was known for its problematic crime rate, and the occasional crack of a gun discharging was like the crowing of birds to the locals, simply an everyday background noise. "Vincent obviously relished his free reign," the blonde assassin continued as she returned her gaze to the body of the slain adolescent. "But at least we can expect that the authorities won't be turning up on the scene any time soon."

"Mm," Kirika concurred, nodding while her eyes remained affixed to the corpse.

Mireille shifted her attention to the dead boy's face, it red and swollen, seemingly having been battered rather severely before his demise. His identity was foreign to her, not that she really paid much heed to every one of Simon's childish acquaintances she encountered. The Corsican mused who he had been to the hacker, however. A late customer? A so-called friend? A contact?

Mireille exhaled slowly, her ice blue eyes narrowing and a frown creasing her brow; her expression hardening as the sentiments borne from her being a professional killer for years came to fore. Did it really matter who the victim had been? He was dead and gone, and she didn't have the time to spare for baseless speculation on his personal history. The longer she and Kirika lingered the further Ryosuke and Vincent slipped through their fingers. Mireille sought to clench their fist tightly around the men tonight if she could, and crush them in it. But that would be unlikely to occur without knowing their current whereabouts. She prayed that the false Noir had left behind some sort of pointer as to where they had headed next, yet it would be the product of sloppiness on their part if they had. And as could be imagined the idea of Ryosuke and Vincent-who, from what the Corsican had seen, were very able killers-being careless was an implausible one. Still, everybody regardless of how skilled they were made a mistake sooner or later. With any luck, this night had been the instant that Mireille and Kirika's quarry had slipped up.

Mireille looked over her shoulder at the L-shaped desk and the body slumped upon it to the rear of her and colleague, her countenance becoming a tad grimmer. She then briskly strode towards Simon without hesitation, Kirika lagging behind her.

As soon as Mireille had entered the basement and witnessed the carnage, she had known that Simon was dead. He was hunched forwards in his chair, collapsed over one of his keyboards, the back of his head coloured with a thick dark red pigment that clashed garishly with the green dye tinting the rest of his brown hair. More of the crimson colorant oozed down the hacker's cheeks and had collected in the groves between the keys of the keyboard, while a large amount had been splattered against a smashed computer monitor's screen, droplets dripping lazily from the jagged glass. Simon had taken a bullet to the back of the head, a classic execution. The shot must have been fired at close range, too, the round evidently having passed straight through his skull to shatter the monitor screen in front of him.

"Are you okay?"

Kirika's voice from close beside her startled Mireille a bit, the woman's shoulders jerking slightly as she was jolted out of a stare she hadn't realised she had been entranced in. She looked away from the corpse of Simon to her partner's sombre face, a single blonde eyebrow raised in puzzlement on an expression that had somewhere along the line softened.

"Of course I am," Mireille said as though it were obvious, favouring Kirika with a perplexed look. She then frowned, looking at the girl askance. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Kirika lowered her head, her eyes shifting to Simon's remains. "I'd only met him a few times, but he was your friend," she said quietly, before she lifted her head to look up at Mireille woefully. "You knew him…."

Mireille merely blinked at Kirika for a couple of moments as she tried to wrap her mind around what the feeling-hearted girl was getting at. When she finally succeeded, her frown disappeared as she regarded her partner with mild bemusement. "I may have known him, but it wasn't as if we were friends," she explained. She turned her head back to the teenager whose know-how in computer network security she had sometimes taken advantage of… and never would be able to again. "He was nothing more than a…." Her visage hardened yet again, the harsh, cold mask her sort often donned fitting once more over her face. "…Than an acquaintance."

An acquaintance. A contact. A source. Mireille had sadly learnt early in her life as a contract killer that it was wisest to keep your business associates as strictly that; they were solely individuals you conducted transactions with, nothing more. The relationship between all parties should idyllically be as dry as possible… and not only for the obvious security precautions. If one strayed from that paradigm, all that awaited her or him was unnecessary pain and guilt, anguish that could have been avoided. An assassin whose heart contained even the slightest speck of compassion couldn't afford to have friends, only acquaintances. Friends die, but acquaintances merely… drifted apart from you. An assassin's heart had to be hard, an unfeeling lump of rock supplanting the fragile, easily bruised organ in their chest. There was no other means to stomach the job.

Yet even the stoniest of hearts had its fissures. No matter how strong the shell one encases their heart in, certain people have a way of weeding beyond it and into the soft centre it had been trying to protect. Acquaintances could become friends before one even realised it, and by then it was too late-the heart does not let go easily. It's good while it lasts-friends help share the burden of one's life, and for an assassin that life's burdens are weighty indeed. But friends are akin to a ticking time bomb, or perhaps an addictive drug that eventually runs out. There sooner or later comes a day when your very relationship with them results in their premature fall into a grave, and then when the grief and guilt arrive afterwards it's almost overwhelming. It's better to prevent the friendship from the onset, before your heart is wounded. In Mireille's experience the wounds of the heart tended to cut the deepest. Needless to say, the woman had very few friends. Most of the ones she'd had were dead now, and she wasn't looking to replace them.

And besides she had Kirika, quite possibly the greatest example of how someone can surreptitiously delve into a frozen heart while it remained utterly oblivious to the incursion, and to its subtle defrosting that ensued. However Kirika was a special circumstance. She was an assassin like Mireille, a partner in arms who trudged along the black path in unison with the woman. Kirika knew the danger, but unlike Mireille's now dirt-napping friends, she had *lived* the danger and was still living it to this day. The quiet girl understood the score like no outsider could, and moreover possessed the expertise in the art of murder to survive it. The blonde could rest assured that Kirika would never follow in her late friends' footsteps and succumb to the perils of her-of their-unforgiving existence… or at least not easily, and not without Mireille having anything to do about it. With that-albeit slightly tentative-assurance, the woman could permit herself to maintain her present level of closeness to her partner with the prospect of furthering it, free of the usual apprehension that came with bonding to people who were strangers to the trade. It could be said that Kirika was Mireille's ideal friend, the only kind of companion truly suited to the Corsican's hazardous lifestyle. But the girl far outshined any friend she'd ever had. Kirika had become more significant to the blonde than a thousand friends for she had touched the woman's heart in a way like no other, exposing her to feelings she'd never experienced before, emotions that were different than those of friendship, which appeared as mundane alongside them. She had never believed there would be any place for love in her life apart from the empty physical kind, and yet here it was, standing beside her at this exact moment in the inconspicuous form of a teenage Japanese girl… who held a gun. Maybe, as in friendship, only a fellow assassin had the capability to claim Mireille's frequently standoffish heart. Or perhaps only Kirika herself could, the woman's 'fated' other half. When she thought about it, Mireille couldn't envision herself feeling the same way for anybody else; Kirika was unique, and her heart could accept no one else, as though it had been made precisely to match up with the girl's. Quite possibly the legend of Noir had some truth behind it after all.

Mireille looked back at the departed Simon and at what he had been reduced to-a murder victim in his own home, simply another fatality in a bad neighbourhood-and found it a struggle to preserve her aloof stance she laboured to adhere to. Slivers of guilt began to coil around her heart, squeezing it and endeavouring to rupture its cool armour. An acquaintance the hacker may have been, and a grating one at that, but even Mireille knew deep down inside that he hadn't deserved an ending like this. Part of her-the callous part, the part that she had cultivated during her existence as an assassin-said that he had been aware of the risks, that he had been aware of the shady and potentially dangerous business he had chosen to involve himself in. She should not feel guilty when he had brought Death upon himself.

However he *hadn't* been aware of the risks, not the ones that had led to him receiving a bullet in the brain anyway. Mireille had neglected to enlighten the teenager to the threat the men she'd had him search for posed, opting to keep the degree of information he was privy to on a need to know basis, as was a normal practice of hers. But if she had relented, maybe Simon would have exercised more caution and then he and his associates would be alive and well right now instead of lying around slaughtered in a dismal basement of a ramshackle slum. The only vaguely plausible motive the Corsican had been able to come up with thus far for Ryosuke and Vincent's visit to and execution of Simon and his cohorts was that by some miracle one member of the hacker's professed network of informants he was apparently able to utilise-likely the mystery youth whom had been shot repeatedly in the chest a short distance from the desk-had stumbled upon the two hitmen's new accommodations. There, the men had noticed him before he unknowingly led them to the computer store, where in a lethal fashion the pair had proceeded to show him, his employer, and Ezza their displeasure at being watched. If this depiction of what had taken place here was accurate, even somewhat, then the blonde's guilt may be justified.

Yet on the other hand even if Mireille had informed Simon of the danger, she suspected it wouldn't have changed the grisly outcome at all, barring the case where the hacker turned down the assignment out of fear. His informants' hunting methods were probably as slipshod as the come, and when up against skilled individuals such as the false Noir, the chances of their scrutiny-even if it only lasted for an instance-being detected was high indeed. On top of all that, Simon's traditional enthusiasm in pleasing Mireille probably hadn't helped the situation either. Too much eagerness can foster carelessness, and when coupled with the hacker's already lax snitches, it made for a surefire treacherous mix.

But then there was Simon and his acquaintances' ages. They were young, Simon not much older than Kirika, while the presumed informant might even have been of comparable age to her. The fact that they'd had their lives snuffed out so early on was what mainly provoked the guilt that strived to slither into Mireille's heart. That, and because they were so close to her partner's age bracket-she didn't enjoy being reminded of Kirika's mortality, peerless combat prowess or no. Regardless of someone's age-be they a child, adolescent, adult, or older-none were exempt from possibly becoming a victim, from possibly becoming prey for the predators that walked this earth. The black path paved its road with countless victims, and not all were travellers of its dark route.

"Mm," Kirika mumbled uncertainly at Mireille's clarification, still looking up at the woman with doleful eyes. "But-"

"We shouldn't dawdle," Mireille interrupted rather firmly, marching past Kirika towards Ezza's body as the lithe girl turned after her, her mouth open but her words prematurely silenced by her partner's frank brush-off. The blonde knew that she was being abrasive to the one person that should be spared such treatment, but the atmosphere of the murky basement was beginning to feel oppressive. The stench of Death hung in the air, a gradually rising, gradually gathering scent that seemed to slowly smother her from all sides. The odour was normally not something that bothered her, and yet…. The moment when Mireille left this… this *tomb* and breathed in the fresh night air outside couldn't come soon enough for her.

Mireille briskly treaded across the room while Kirika trailed after her, putting the computers on the desk and their lifeless operator to her back. Ezza's corpse was ahead of her, slouched against a wall and shaded in the darkness, his form indistinct where it sat outside the light, almost swallowed up completely in the gloom. As the Corsican assassin stepped out of the puddle of monitor glow to join the carcass in the shadows, she felt something strike the toe of her boot, a rasp coming from the floor. Pausing, she looked down and noticed what resembled a mobile phone at her feet. It appeared to be a very expensive model, the kind that could acquire a signal practically anywhere and had peripheral functions galore. Mireille found it odd that Simon had had the funds to pay for such a pricey device, but then he had been able purchase and maintain a top of range network of computers; perhaps he had diverted some of his cash from their upgrades for the phone. However it had got there, it was nothing more than a paperweight now. The mobile phone was severely mangled; its black plastic casing split and twisted, exposing a cracked circuit board with crushed microchips inside.

"Maybe they tried to call for help," Kirika suggested as she halted slightly behind Mireille, also looking upon the smashed communications device that had waylaid the blonde.

"If they had, then whoever killed them didn't take kindly to it," Mireille replied, picturing Ryosuke or Vincent viciously stomping on the mobile phone and its unfortunate user's hand with it.

Moving onwards, Mireille and Kirika approached Ezza, arranging themselves on either side of his still body. He sat with his back against the wall, his legs straightened out in front of him… or one of them at any rate. His left leg was bent at an unnatural angle below the knee, the joint ruined by most likely a gunshot, or by an extremely brutal blow with a heavy object that had ruptured the flesh and dislocated it.

Sighting no other external wounds below his neck, Mireille shifted her gaze higher, settling it on Ezza's head. The youth's chin rested on his chest, his lank hair drooping downwards in greasy waves and obscuring his face from view. Pressing the barrel of her Walther gingerly against his forehead, Mireille carefully tilted his head back upright, and revealed what she had already guessed was there-the mortal injury that had resulted in his death. But this injury was no mere bullet to the brow; this was on par with a concentrated shotgun blast directly to the face. The woman involuntarily found herself grimacing in revulsion at the hideous mess of dripping blood and shredded flesh Ezza's visage had been turned into. A single gory yet visible hole tunnelled through the centre of his disfigured countenance; a bullet wound, but most definitely one created by a powerful pistol. Yet Mireille had never seen an entry wound of this ferocity caused by anything other than rifles; even handguns of the .357 class fell short of achieving this effect.

"A high calibre round," Kirika said softly, her opinions on the same vein as her partner's. "At extreme close range."

Mireille merely muttered her agreement and let Ezza's head drop back to its former position. As she did, she glimpsed something that had escaped her notice previously-the hair at the back of his head was matted and appeared wet; the shot to his face had passed entirely through his skull. A hand's breadth splash of blood soiled the concrete behind Ezza's head where the bullet had delivered the fluid with its exit; only now that Mireille's eyes had adjusted to the darkness could she discern the telling stain. Her keener gaze additionally picked up a gouge in the wall nestled in the discharged blood that enclosed it-the hollow where the fired slug had burrowed deeply into the solid concrete. Truly a powerful pistol.

Mireille's scowl intensified as she turned around to face the centre of the basement. There were no clues here, no signs to direct her and Kirika to the next segment of Ryosuke and Vincent's trail. No slip-ups, just bodies, corpses of boys who had died much too young. The false Noir-false as they may be-evidently possessed enough talent and prudence not to leave any tracks behind that could be traced.

"There's nothing," Mireille said with clear displeasure, voicing her beliefs… and concerns. She feared the trail had been ice cold before she and Kirika had even shown up.

"Mm…" Kirika murmured unhappily, bowing her head and looking down at the floor. But then a moment later her head suddenly snapped up and she blinked, before turning to favour Mireille with a somewhat enlivened expression. "The video camera," she said a little breathlessly.

A still frowning yet curious Mireille turned her head to Kirika, the Corsican assassin wondering what had gotten the quiet girl worked up. She merely blinked at her partner's hopeful face for a second as Kirika simply looked back at her, before it finally sunk in. The video camera. Of course! Simon kept his basement abode under surveillance!

Mireille gasped in realisation, her scowl vanishing, and-with Kirika accompanying her-hurried back to the desk, searching among the monitors for the unique one that displayed the output of the camera mounted covertly in one dark corner of the room. "Let's hope that he actually recorded the feed," she said as her eyes scanned anxiously over the cluster of screens while she wracked her brains, trying to recall its position. During her hunt she noticed that one of Simon's PC towers had a couple of bullet holes marring its front, the blemishes just above the floppy disk drive. It was peculiar since she didn't believe that the false Noir's shots would miss their marks while up against trapped and unarmed teenagers. Maybe it was for intimidation reasons.

Following a handful of seconds spent looking for it Mireille located the video camera's monitor, its television-like exterior betraying the different purpose it had to its mates. Like a few other screens it was switched off, a black square that could easily be overlooked in the dim light as Ryosuke and Vincent had apparently done together with missing the camera. The blonde assassin didn't know why the monitor wasn't on, but whatever the grounds it had worked in her and Kirika's favour. That is, if the camera it was connected to wasn't switched off as well.

Not willing to wait any longer to find out, Mireille switched on the monitor. It flared to life, and presented the welcome black and white image of her and her partner standing in front of the computer desk, the basement stairs at the top of the screen behind the figures. Despite the lack of colour the picture was exceedingly clear; Simon had seemingly opted for a camera and monitor that both operated at a high resolution, perhaps even forgoing traditional cassette tape for a purely digital recording medium.

There were controls to directly manipulate the picture on the monitor below the screen that supported the digital theory and which Mireille used to attempt to rewind the recording to the time when Simon and his cohorts have been paid a deadly visit. To her relief, an animated time selection slider bar appeared on the screen that through the controls allowed her to replay the recorded events that had taken place in the basement before she and Kirika had arrived, and in turn shed some light on exactly what had happened.

The position of the camera only captured a small section of the basement, but it was enough to grant Mireille and Kirika a general idea of how Simon, Ezza, and the other juvenile had been slain. Jacques had evidently been working for Breffort after all; Ryosuke and Vincent had indeed come to the computer shop and were responsible for its young occupants' murders. Nearly everyone remained partly or totally off screen for the most part, with the sole exceptions of Ryosuke and Simon, the former of which mainly stood like statue a couple of feet from the staircase while the latter sat at the desk. While the hacker's abuse and subsequent execution by Vincent had been recorded in graphic detail-the only death to be-their was only two things that interested Mireille; what Ryosuke had said to him shortly before his demise that'd had him nodding his head in fervent compliance, and who had phoned the hitman to seemingly prompt him to speak to the youth. Unfortunately, there was no sound mixed in with the pictures of the recording, leaving the Corsican and her partner pretty much out of luck.

"He… he wants an address," Kirika told Mireille out of the blue in a hesitant voice, her eyes riveted to the monitor as the woman repeated the part of the recording where Ryosuke spoke to Simon.

Mireille paused the playing images to look at the withdrawn girl in surprise. "How do you know that?" she asked, her voice and expression both quizzical.

"That is what he said," Kirika expounded, turning her head from the screen to return her partner's thrown look with her typical sober countenance. "The way his mouth moves."

Mireille blinked languidly at Kirika-her expression rather astonished-and then glanced at the monitor, before turning her head back to her counterpart once again. "You mean to say you read his lips?" she eventually said in amazement, staring incredulously at her partner as the unassuming girl simply stared back at her. "That you can read lips?"

"Mm," Kirika emitted with a nod, as if she were merely confirming that she could skip or do something equally routine, rather than perform a pretty impressive feat.

Mireille closed her eyes as she shook her head gently in bewilderment, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards in the beginnings of a pleasantly surprised smile. So Kirika could read lips. The woman half-jokingly wondered if that applied to every language she spoke… but knowing Kirika, it probably did. She was an unassuming girl indeed. The Corsican assassin could see the handiness of having such a gift, as Altena no doubt had too. Being able to know what guards, targets-anybody really-were speaking of from a distance could privy one to useful intel… much like in this precise situation.

"You certainly are a deceptive package," Mireille declared with as much wryness as she could muster given their grim surroundings. She opened her eyes and smiled faintly at Kirika, her expression remarkably tender in relation to its past harsh appearance. "But I suppose I was already cognisant of that," she then added a little playfully, angling her head to look at the girl sidelong, the smile remaining on her lips. "Still full of surprises, even now."

Kirika lowered her head slightly at Mireille's words, dropping her gaze from the blonde. Mireille smirked a little at the reaction-she just might have embarrassed the introverted girl. While she hadn't known her reserved counterpart to ever openly blush-although the woman did hold onto the hope that one day she would witness the no doubt *very* cute action-Kirika did have her own endearing ways of displaying her discomfit that the Corsican had identified and hence could normally spot, as in this case. Yet on this occasion the girl's face somehow seemed sadder than it had a few moments ago. Mireille chalked it up to a trick of the meagre light; she was quite sure she hadn't said anything that Kirika could have construed the wrong way.

Mireille's visage reverted back to its former serious guise-warm to cold-as she refocused her attention on the video camera's monitor, her and her partner's fleeting interlude of light-heartedness over. After all, it was difficult to be cheerful when in the presence of corpses who had once been people you knew.

"Can you make out the address he wants?" Mireille posed to Kirika as she restarted the recording. Her eyes flicked to the two bullet holes in one of the computer towers standing upright on the desk, now understanding the full story behind the punctures. Although the camera had captured Vincent firing the rounds just before he and his colleague had departed the basement-dismissing the notion that they had been stray shots-the blonde hadn't known why he had done so. But with the recent information of Ryosuke desiring Simon to dig up an address for him, it now all made sense-the shots were to destroy the evidence resident in the hard disk of the computer used to find the address, and in turn hide any trace of his and Vincent's visit while also preventing anyone from tailing them. However, they obviously hadn't counted on the sharp young Japanese girl at Mireille's side.

Kirika looked up and turned to the monitor, studying its high-resolution screen intently for a couple of minutes as the logged scenes played out. She then shook her head. "He never says it. But he does say somebody's name," she notified the blonde. Kirika's brow furrowed in concentration as she closely scrutinised the image of Ryosuke's moving lips as they noiselessly formed words, the girl frequently requesting Mireille to repeat one portion of the recording which the woman dutifully did.

"Al… Albe… Al… ber… bert. Albert…" Kirika mumbled softly to herself as Mireille watched on in fascination tempered somewhat by her current dark mood, the woman's fingers moving automatically on the monitor's controls to replay the segment of footage, her mind all but wholly captivated by her petite partner. She scarcely drew breath lest she disturb the girl's focus; people's names were apparently trickier to read from lip movements alone than general words.

"Lar… o… Laro… ka? Laro… Laro… que. Laroque." Kirika turned her head to Mireille, the said blonde regarding her slightly uncertainly. "Albert Laroque," she then stated simply, her reconstruction of every silent syllable of the name uttered by Ryosuke complete.

"Albert Laroque?" Mireille echoed, knitting her brow. The name didn't ring any bells, but she trusted Kirika's conclusions implicitly. The notion that perhaps the darkhaired girl had mispronounced the name didn't even enter her mind.

Abandoning her efforts to try and remember if she were familiar with 'Albert Laroque', Mireille instead let her hard mask slip again for a second and cast a small, fond smile Kirika's way in a gesture of approval. "Well done," she praised quietly, although the girl merely responded with her usual impassive look; her version of dismissively shrugging one's shoulders, the blonde thought wryly. "What about his phone call? Can you tell what he says?" she then asked as she rewound the recording to that exact part.

Kirika shook her head as she regretfully murmured in the negative. "He doesn't move his lips enough," she said. "But I think he's speaking Japanese," she then helpfully offered instead.

Mireille absently nodded. The phone call wasn't really relevant anymore; she and Kirika had already found the elusive breadcrumb that revealed the next branch of the false Noir's trail. And it came in the form of a name-Albert Laroque. Simon's and his colleagues' murders had clearly not been without gain after all; even in death the hacker had provided valuable information, just like a well-paid contact-a well-paid acquaintance-should.

"We're finished here," Mireille announced unfeelingly, more to the air than to her partner. She then walked away from the L-shaped desk in the direction of the basement stairs, Kirika obediently at her heels.

When she reached the bottom of the steps, Mireille abruptly stopped and looked back over her shoulder, bringing up her pistol in the same motion. Aiming for the video camera's monitor, she squeezed the trigger of the Walther and destroyed it with a single shot, before unleashing the remainder of the weapon's magazine into rest of Simon's computer equipment, making certain it was all damaged beyond repair. Mireille and Kirika would leave here without a trace, unlike their warped other halves. The blonde's bullet casings were unmarked, and the fingerprints she and her partner had left behind weren't an issue-to the Corsican's knowledge neither hers nor her Japanese counterpart's existed in any record anywhere in the world, let alone in Paris' metropolitan Police department's databases. Mireille's history was as clean as they come which had consequently never warranted her fingerprints to ever be taken, while Kirika was more or less a ghost existing outside of society's radar. Yet, come to think of it, Kirika hadn't touched a solitary object in the building so far. Mireille had neglected to notice that until just now, a credit to the girl's subtlety and skill as an assassin.

Mireille ejected the empty clip from her gun and placed it in one of the ammunition pouches on the harness strapped under her coat, before reloading. She then resumed her exodus of the basement, climbing up the creaky wooden stairs and making no attempt to mitigate the noise of her footsteps. Kirika's own ascension of the staircase was still hushed however, maintaining stealth likely an unconscious act for the talented girl.

Mireille pulled out her mobile phone from her coat's inside pocket with her free hand, and begun dialling the number for one of her many sources who could ascertain the address of Albert Laroque; the address where Ryosuke and Vincent were doubtless at this very minute. Time was still of the essence; the Corsican didn't want to miss the two men and end up chasing them around fruitlessly until morning, one step behind. She wanted to end this 'assignment' of Breffort's tonight, end her and her partner's relation with him and Soldats for good. She wanted her and Kirika to be utterly free of the organisation forever and simply live their lives in blessed privacy together. It was all within grasp tonight, within Mireille's tightening fist. She imagined she should be thankful to Simon for his sacrifice; quite possibly his last service to her was the greatest.

But despite that, as she strode up the stairs to street level she didn't so much as cast a last look back into the dark basement that had become Simon and his associates' grave. After all, Simon had merely been an acquaintance of hers… and they had drifted apart.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Dominique's section certainly dragged on a bit, but I didn't want to keep everyone in the dark for too long. The plot needed to have some flesh put on it. Apologies to people who dislike reading about original characters too much in a fanfic.


	14. A Remnant of a Pilgrimage

Red And Black - By Kirika

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The fourteenth chapter. You wouldn't believe how many times I listened to Salva Nos while writing this part.

**Rechecked and tinkered a little. I was half-dead when I first did it, after all. I also changed Remi Graipaul (courtesy of Soldats' Noir fansub version) to Remy Breffort in this and previous chapters in accordance to ADV's translation. Langon's Manuscript was changed to Langonel's Manuscript for the same reason too in the first chapter.

- Kirika

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Chapter 14 - A Remnant of a Pilgrimage

It was the dead of night with the hour well past twelve, it having become deeply immersed in time's darkest, most sinister stretch during Mireille and Kirika's hunt across the city for the false Noir. A moonless sky enclosed the assassins in a black dome above, the few visible weakly twinkling stars hanging overhead ineffectually trying to shine through a thick spattering of murky charcoal cloud cover that seemingly absorbed their light with ease; the dark scoring dominance over its counterpart, a result so reminiscent of real life. On the street below the one-sided struggle where Mireille and Kirika stood unbroken quiet reigned; there were no faint whooshes of the occasional car travelling down a distant road, no muted calls of late-night revellers leaving dance clubs finally closing their doors, nor was there even the repeated chirps of nocturnal insects to break the hush. It was just the quiet-the silence-as if there wasn't another soul alive in the world bar the two young women, the dead of night living up to its name.

The already low temperature had dropped too as the hour had progressed, the air degenerating from a mere unpleasant chilly that cooled the skin to a biting icy that threatened to numb it. Frozen hands akin to those of a corpse stroked swirling patterns across Mireille's bare midriff, teasing goose bumps into puckering as they passed. The muscles of her stomach stiffened at the touch of the freezing winds turned caresses, but she didn't let them bother her, not even making the slightest move to close her gently flapping coat around her body to attain extra warmth. It was cold like the inside of a meat locker, cold like a morgue… but it was just another distraction to Mireille that she easily ignored, and a minor distraction at that. In truth she thought the grim atmosphere and the frosty temperature along with it rather appropriate considering what had taken place thus far this night, and considering what was about to. All that was missing were the wisps of roiling fog hovering over the road in front of her and Kirika before a classic gritty backdrop of a film noir would come to life.

Mireille smiled, a smile as cold as her surroundings. A film noir. How appropriate indeed. The black skies, the quiet, still ambiance, the freezing air-they were the perfect conditions, the perfect setting for one of those types of movies. And Mireille and Kirika were the perfect if somewhat atypical protagonists, both poised for what looked to be the climatic scene where they met their nemeses at last for the final, decisive confrontation that spelled certain doom for one side. They were the lone executioners out for themselves, symbolising Death itself-Death in two halves-coming, coming to claim their detested adversaries in a hail of bullets. And now after stalking the gloomy nighttime streets in dogged pursuit of their prey, cardboard cutout bad guys dead by the dozen behind them, they had arrived at their final destination for the supposed ultimate showdown. At the end of the trail. At the end of their involvement with Soldats. Tomorrow this… divergence… from Mireille and Kirika's prior lifestyle would be merely an unpleasant memory, one to be forgotten, disregarded as if it had never happened. It would be a happy ending for them, a moderately rare thing in a film noir. Still, those endings did sometimes occur where the antiheros somehow despite their dark existences found peace and contentment, much like when Mireille and Kirika had found it following the shootout at the Manor. Those protagonists, however, customarily paid for their joy in the blood of others, but seldom was that blood innocent, just like in this instance. For freedom from the machinations of Soldats, for a life of relative solitude with her partner, Kirika, Mireille saw the deaths of two more murderers on top of countless others already slain by their hands as a cheap price she was gladly willing to pay. Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu would be dead by dawn; she swore it. The vendetta she had against them for being partly responsible for dragging her and Kirika back onto the black path would be satisfied in the only way it could be-with violence and bloodshed resulting in death. Their deaths.

The deserted street where Mireille and Kirika were situated in was dimly lit by old, black cast-iron lampposts lining either side of the road, their circles of light spread out a foot or two apart from each other with shadows filling in the gaps. It was there in those shadows that the pair of assassins lurked, scrutinising the building on the opposite side of the street with calculating eyes.

The contact Mireille had phoned whilst departing Simon's decrepit abode hadn't appreciated the very early wake-up call or being dragged out of bed, but nevertheless had dug up the address for 'Albert Laroque' within twenty minutes… although the time could have been shortened if she'd forgone grumbling about the hour during the first five minutes of their conversation. From the slums to the suburbs Mireille and Kirika had then journeyed, the acquired address pointing to a residence in an upper-class and quite exclusive district of Paris, a welcome change from the capitol's less than savoury locales. Yet while the potential threat from the common hoodlum was greatly reduced in such an environment, there were other dangers to watch out for. In Mireille's experience the exceptionally rich regularly saw themselves as a superior breed than others, haughtily believing that they were above the perceived 'lower caste' of people and the laws that governed them. Hence, they sometimes liked to make their own rules-if any-with their hired security guards who safeguarded their assets and persons-who tended to be little more than semi-straight gangsters with dubious morals oft cases-partial to shooting first and asking questions later, secure in the knowledge that their wealthy and typically influential employer would deflect the ensuing flak from the authorities a lead-filled body would bring. Justice blinded for a Euro or two. Mireille wasn't criticising the last fact, however-far from it. She herself had paid off more than one law enforcement official to look the other way in her lifetime, and would do it again without a second thought if called for. Like those affluent members of high society with superiority complexes, she was rather thankful that the law was only as strong as the people who upheld it. But the difference was Mireille never forgot that she wasn't above it. Regardless of what one believed of the law, at the end of the day it would still judge your actions all the same… if you were caught, that is.

However, by the looks of the mansion Mireille and Kirika were currently scoping out there were no aforementioned sentries to contend with. True, it was one of the largest houses-or rather, estates-in the district, but not a guard was in sight. The Corsican expected the nightshift to be smaller than the dayshift, but she at least thought a doorman of sorts would be by the front gate entrance even at this late hour. She had her suspicions as to why this was of course, ranging from the absent guard simply answering a call of nature to him or her having been brutally slain-the top choice for the moment, taking into account that Ryosuke and Vincent apparently had an interest in this particular property-yet none she wished to accept as concrete without further investigation. For all she knew the guard watched over his post from a distance, maybe even from an elevated position with a high-powered rifle. *That* would be a nasty surprise. One could never be too cautious in this business; your life was on the line, after all; your most precious possession.

Well, in *theory* your most precious possession, Mireille amended with a sardonic smirk as her eyes darted surreptitiously to her diminutive colleague beside her. The blonde naturally held her own life in high regard, but if she had to choose between it and Kirika's, the subject became… hazy. Sure, Mireille wanted to live for as long as possible-who didn't?-but if it came at the cost of her partner's continued existence….

Mireille closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again they had returned to the mansion. Her growing sentimentality was going to get her killed someday, her brush with death or at least severe bodily harm at the Metro station a few days ago a forewarning of the potential catastrophe awaiting her. She was grimly aware that there was barely if any room for it in the life of a killer… not that she had the slightest inclination to curb it at all in spite of that understanding. Love. Mireille wondered if it were really a blessing and not a curse instead. But whatever it was, she knew she couldn't be without it, or specifically not without Kirika's love. The woman's heart had a taste for it now; it was used to its warmth. For it to be cast back into the cold… Mireille doubted whether it would survive the shock intact.

Mireille marshalled her straying mind's faculties back to her pressing task, focusing her attention on the place she and her partner would likely be infiltrating in a few minutes. Looking at the building and its surrounding land, she was sure she and Kirika had the right Albert Laroque. When in doubt, always follow the money and the bigwig who had it. Usually they had links-be they direct or indirect-to some nefarious activity or activities. Petty drug infractions, hardcore arms dealing-essentially anything that made them wealthier or provided illicit pleasure. Or both. In addition Mireille didn't believe individuals like Ryosuke and Vincent would have business with Albert Laroque the grocer who lived a boring life in a duplex with his wife and two children. It was common sense. Whatever the false Noir's reasons for visiting Laroque's estate, it had to be on the shady side, possibly with murderous ambition. The blonde couldn't fathom a mundane cause for them to do so, especially since they had gone so far as to kill Simon and everyone who had been with him at the time in his basement, all in an effort to cover their tracks. Ryosuke and Vincent were foreigners in an unfamiliar country; what other grounds could there be but on a business affair?

Laroque's estate was quite vast, spanning at least two hundred square metres. A three foot high light grey brick wall enclosed the compound, with a sturdy fence of jet black iron bars capped with wicked arrowheads protruding at least seven feet out of its top face, their motif not unlike the nearby lampposts' in the street. A lawn of well kept, lush, dark green grass covered most of the estate's interior, with a handful of neatly arranged circular flowerbeds sprinkled here and there in a orderly fashion creating the illusion that the house it surrounded was a chateau in the countryside rather than a mansion in the city. Most of the flowering plants inside the beds had ceased to bloom however, the close onset of winter to blame for their now barren look. Nevertheless, the conifers present still thrived, the small ones on the edge of the flowerbeds and the tall ones bordering the outside of the estate's unfriendly fence as green as ever. Yet without the bright colours of flourishing blossoms the interior of the estate with its gardens appeared dull, dreary, all greys and greens and blacks. Of course it was nighttime, but Mireille suspected that even in the day light hours it would seem bleak, perhaps even bleaker.

A gravel road of slate-grey stone chips lit by flanking short bollard lamps extended out from the main gate and merged into a small roundabout in front of the mansion, another flowerbed-although larger-filling its centre. The two-storey house itself sat approximately in the heart of the grounds, constructed of the same hefty and aged bricks as the estate's wall. It was difficult for Mireille to make out fine details through the murk of the night, but she did note that the building was designed in the classic old-fashioned style reminiscent of many a rural land manor of yesteryear, its sole exceptions its windows which had been modernised-framed in white they were, and tall and slender, plus arched at their zenith-and the inclusion of a garage beside the right side of house, likely the abode of numerous luxury cars.

No lights shone from the expansive house; it was drenched utterly in darkness, for all intents and purposes asleep for the night. It was the ideal time for guests disinclined to announce themselves to visit, guests like Ryosuke and Vincent… and guests like Mireille and Kirika. The false Noir were probably flitting through the mansion's gloomy corridors like malevolent spectres at this very moment if the Corsican and her partner had gotten their facts right, but soon two more spirits would join them in their haunt, spirits who rattled no chains nor wailed their presence. While houses slumbered, the silent ghosts reigned supreme.

Plumes of mist fleetingly clouded the air in front of Mireille's face with her every breath-as soft as those breaths were-and the cold of the dead night was beginning to permeate to her very bones. She clenched and then unclenched her fists slowly, her ten fingers turned ten icicles aching as fresh hot blood was pumped into the numbed flesh. She and Kirika had tarried long enough in this winter's chill. Rubbing out their two distorted mirror images should serve to warm them up nicely.

Mireille turned away from the sight of Laroque's residence to Kirika, for one to inform her that they were to venture inside the estate's grounds momentarily, and for another because she was curious as to how her petite and lightly clad partner was coping with the cold so far. Kirika's arms and legs were completely bare owing to her sleeveless top and short skirt; an average girl of her slight build would be practically shivering and chattering her teeth by now. Yet, as Mireille had predicted from observing her on numerous other frosty nights, her diminutive but consummate partner in the business of dealing death didn't appear to be affected by the wintry weather at all. Kirika stood perfectly at ease on the pavement beside Mireille, her doe eyes glued to Laroque's estate as she carefully scrutinised the environment, totally unfazed by her bitter cold surroundings. Even her warm breath was virtually non-existent in the frosty air, hardly a wisp forming in spite of the considerable difference in temperature between the two.

Mireille wondered if Kirika intentionally suppressed her breathing as an act of stealth, or if it was an unconscious act that had been drilled into her during her less than cheerful childhood. Probably the latter; Kirika's entire childhood was sadly a tragic tale of abuse. Mireille's own childhood wasn't exactly a model for others to admire either, what with losing her parents and brother and having to abandon her home at a young age, but compared to her partner's it had been pure bliss. At least the blonde had had her uncle to look after and love her, but Kirika had had no one but Altena and her combat instructors who were doubtless not disposed to bestowing affection upon their charges.

Perhaps it was of no wonder then that the girl had fallen head over heels in love with Mireille. The woman was the only real person to ever show her even a shred of warmth, and considering that that warmth hadn't been that warm at all in the beginning was a testament to the extent of the maltreatment the young assassin had endured. Kirika herself had told Mireille in her farewell letter that she had been incredibly lonely until she had met her, that she had been relieved and excited when she had learned that Noir was a name for a pair of assassins. Indeed, it should be of no surprise that Kirika clung to the Corsican so fervently, and that she held her in such high esteem-Mireille's love was the first and only love Kirika had ever known. Such weighty responsibilities the girl put on the blonde's shoulders. Still, Mireille wouldn't have anyone else bear them. She cherished those responsibilities, and felt proud that she had been chosen to carry them… if a little nervous as well. Regardless, she would endeavour to be a first love worthy of Kirika, and one entitled to remain the only. Mireille would do her best to imbue the remainder of Kirika's life with the love that had been missing from her childhood, and in doing so perhaps make up for the past years of cruel mistreatment. Heaven knows the girl had earned it.

On a sudden and irresistible whim, either brought on by her prior introspective thoughts, simply to get Kirika's attention, or a combination of both, Mireille reached out and stroked the back of one finger down her partner's left upper arm, and learned that while the cold didn't seem to touch her mind, it did clearly touch her body. Kirika's skin was as chilled as Mireille's was, and a field of tiny goose bumps prickled the Corsican's finger as it proceeded towards the darkhaired girl's elbow.

Mireille smiled faintly at the ticklish sensation as her eyes followed her finger's gentle course. So Kirika was human after all. And the poor girl was as cold as she was, even if the stoic assassin didn't acknowledge it.

Kirika gave a start as soon as the woman made contact with her arm, and immediately turned her head to favour her with a quizzical look. Mireille merely continued to smile that fond smile however, undeterred by the expression and more importantly by the realisation of just what she was doing. Only a scant couple of days earlier she would have been quite uncomfortable touching Kirika in such a manner, no matter how innocuous a brush on the arm was. But while she still she had to restrain herself from pulling back her hand as if she was doing something improper, it was a fight easily won. Kirika needed the attention, needed the affection. She needed the love-Mireille's love. Yet Mireille couldn't help questioning her own motives. True, she wished to no longer neglect her other half and prove to the girl that she cared for her, but… but it wasn't only Kirika's desires she was satisfying.

Mireille was… attracted to Kirika. Goodness knows the lithe assassin was vastly skilled in the art of murder, far surpassing the Corsican's own ability, but she was also… well, put frankly, a very adorable girl. Mireille had tried not to acknowledge the fact, tried to distance herself from Kirika the person and simply view her partner as Kirika the assassin, but that was one battle she had slowly lost, and, in retrospect, had been bound to lose. She loved the girl with all her heart, and with that love came the longing to express it. Physically… intimately.

If Mireille looked at it rationally she knew it was a natural thing, a natural progression of a blossoming romantic relationship… but unfortunately when it involved Kirika the rational part of her mind rarely was given voice. It had taken Mireille a while to realise-or perhaps more correctly, decisively address-the genuine root of her… hesitation, the woman supposed one could call it, to touch Kirika affectionately, but it was all too clear to her now. It was funny how after all the arguably appalling things she had done as a killer for hire, taking the last remaining innocence of a teenage girl would give her pause. However, it wasn't as if Mireille was without morals or compassion. A killer she may be, but she was still a human being regardless of what anybody else thought. Kirika had been thrust into a life that few her age had been-or should be-subjected to, a life where innocence died a swift death. The things she had seen, the things she had done; all had stripped her of what it meant to be a child, stripped her almost bare of her innocence. Yet against all odds, a surprising amount of Kirika's naivety had survived the abuse, mostly attributable to her lack of schooling on everyday subjects and also undoubtedly to her self-preserving choice to repress the ghastly events of the past though the birthing of a second persona. Included in that subsisting naivety was her innocence regarding love, or rather the physical aspects of it. At least Kirika had that much of her innocence left, a fact that Mireille was exceedingly thankful for. In that regard she was untouched, pure and-the blonde was absolutely certain-virginal.

However, this posed as equal a joy as a predicament for Mireille. Part of the woman wanted to keep Kirika the way she was now forever-cute and clueless-but another simply *wanted* her. Mireille ached to touch Kirika, to hug her and kiss her as a lover would; it had been that yearning which had prompted her to caress the oblivious girl during her sleep, the only time she'd had the courage to do so. Pathetic she knew, but she just couldn't help feeling that her desire was wrong. In the slightest touch she read a carnal craving lurking behind it, regardless of her true intent. Kirika was just so… so… so *innocent* in that respect; it was like she was taking advantage of her youthful partner. Mireille didn't think she even knew what a lesbian was!

Still, in spite of her reluctance to touch Kirika, Mireille was deeply aware it couldn't be avoided, regardless of what she wanted to do. Kirika needed her love, and she would have it. All of it. What that entailed exactly the Corsican didn't quite know yet, but the one thing she did know was not to push their relationship forwards with a heavy hand. Kirika was emotionally fragile in certain respects including this one-as most people were Mireille supposed-and she had to be treated like a fine china doll. Moreover, Mireille herself wasn't exactly keen to rush things either. Truth be told she was still finding her feet in all of this, the woman nearly as inexperienced as Kirika in the matters of the heart. Nevertheless, they would find their way. Together.

Mireille casually let her hand drop when her finger reached halfway down Kirika's arm, and then raised her eyes to make contact with her curious partner's. "It's quiet," she said, casting her gaze back to the mansion for a moment and electing to not respond to the introverted girl's questioning countenance.

"Mm," Kirika agreed, enticed into looking back at Laroque's house briefly by Mireille's like action and in turn apparently forgetting about Mireille's stroking finger, just as the crafty blonde had planned.

"Then why don't we get out of this cold, hmm?" Mireille suggested in a light voice, her smile broadening a little and becoming a shade encouraging.

"Mm," Kirika mumbled again with a nod, although no smile brightened her face. Not that Mireille had expected one to appear. Killing people was nothing to smile about, not to Kirika at any rate. Maybe Mireille had overlooked a small piece of another innocence still alive in the girl. Sympathy for her victims was something that had died long ago inside the Corsican assassin-if it had ever been there at all-yet it seemed to still endure inside her kind-hearted partner. At one point in time Mireille had looked upon Kirika as something akin to a monster, but sometimes she wondered whom the real so-called 'monster' was between them; the born and bred assassin with a warm heart, or the assassin born of circumstance with a cold one.

Without further ado Mireille and Kirika stepped off the footpath and crossed the brightly lit street, their heads warily turning both left and right as they checked to make sure it was empty, more to ensure that no one was around to espy their impending actions rather than to certify that the road was safe to traverse. They approached the estate's front gate-the sole entrance to the compound-as nonchalantly as possible, simply two people out for a late night-if freezing-stroll. Mireille felt edgy under the glare of the streetlights like an insect under a microscope, vulnerable and in the open, at the mercy of those beyond the lights. The shadows of the world were where she felt most comfortable, where she belonged.

Unluckily the road wasn't the only place that was illuminated; the estate's gate was situated in just the right spot to be flooded from all sides by the light from the streetlamps, and if that wasn't enough it even had its own lights shaped like box lanterns mounted on the front face of both pillars where the gate's hinges were affixed. Mireille so disliked operating out from under the cover of darkness, especially during nighttime assignments when a figure darting through pools of light in otherwise murk was all the more noticeable. However, while the abundance of light revealed the woman and her partner's presence to anybody who cared to look their way, it did also serve to reveal to the pair that something ahead was amiss.

Mireille and Kirika stopped in unison before the gate, blue and brown eyes drawn to the stone pillar on its right. Concealed amongst some thick foliage draping over the sides of a plant pot that was sitting atop the rectangular column was a twisted shaft of metal, the remains of a strut. And on the ground below it was the device it had been tasked with holding up-a small security camera, one designed for discrete surveillance. Except that this camera had been crushed into a lump of barely recognisable black plastic and grey steel, as if-judging by its ruined prop-it had been torn violently from its perch and then scrunched into a ball like nothing more than a piece of scrap paper, before being unceremoniously discarded to the ground.

"Mireille," Kirika said softly, attracting the blonde's attention.

Mireille turned to Kirika and saw the girl gesture with a crooked finger at a row of tall conifers lining the fence on the right hand side of the front gate. At first the Corsican was puzzled at what was so interesting about a string of bushes, that was until she noticed the slumped figure lying obscured in the shadows behind their broad branches. She approached the still form, and after gingerly pulling back the springy plant life hiding it, saw that it was of a man dressed in a dark suit with a noticeable bulge where his full gun holster rested on his ribs; the uniform of an expensive hired guard. He lay on his side with his back against the wall enclosing the estate, and was clearly quite dead. With the conifers out of the way the light from the nearby streetlamps rushed to conquer the newly uncovered terrain, and consequently exposed the dreadful trauma the man's body had sustained, giving support to the aforementioned belief.

The guard's torso was covered in still wet blood that glistened dully in the light, the result of what Mireille believed to be numerous stab wounds if the slit-like rips in his shirt and suit jacket were anything to go by. However, there was also a very thin, dark red line across his throat from ear to ear coupled with some surrounding bruising, plus his tongue was lolling obscenely out of his mouth, like he had been strangled. Mireille was familiar with the latter injuries; it was the product of a swift and brutal garrotting with a fine instrument, probably a razor sharp wire of some sort possessing a high degree of tensile strength. Not the most pleasant fashion in which to leave this world.

The ultimate cause of the ill-fated sentry's demise was anybody's guess, however, even the murderers'. The stabs seemed nasty and surely had struck several vital organs-by the looks of it, predominantly the heart and lungs, the prime targets to instil a definite death by knifing against one's victim-and the blood loss was tremendous, but the garrotting appeared to have cut deep and perhaps had severed the man's windpipe on top of strangling him. Death had come for this man along four different routes, but all equally as deadly; he had never even stood a hair's breadth of a chance. Ryosuke and Vincent certainly were efficient-if vicious-killers. But then in this business there was little distinction separating the two.

"I guess this means we have the right address," Mireille commented dryly as she allowed the conifers to snap back into place, before turning back to Kirika. By the damp appearance of the blood the blonde could tell that the guard's wounds hadn't been dished out too long ago. It confirmed that their targets were still in the area, or to be more precise, in Laroque's manor. Fortunately Mireille and Kirika had not arrived here too late.

"Mm…" Kirika murmured, her eyes flicking to the mansion for a moment before returning to the Corsican.

Mireille's gaze found the mangled wreck of the surveillance camera once again, a light frown on her brow. It was strange that no one had come to investigate the sudden and ferocious destruction of the camera, nor the disappearance of the estate's forefront guard. There had to be a manned security station somewhere on the grounds or in the mansion itself if there was a camera; it would be rather pointless if nobody was watching the monitor it was linked up to otherwise. And as for the guard, while Ryosuke and Vincent may have dispatched him in a silent manner to not immediately alert his comrades in the vicinity, one of the other sentries must have eventually noticed that he was missing from his post for a worrying length of time.

Whatever the reason for the apparent lack of response, it was evident that security for Laroque's estate was fairly tight-lax response times notwithstanding-but really no greater than one could envisage for your average affluent and mistrustful family's posh home. A team of armed guards and a network of cameras were nothing Mireille hadn't encountered before, nor easily overcome without breaking a sweat. Guards could be avoided, misled with distraction, bribed, sweet-talked, knocked quietly unconscious, or just killed outright; and as for cameras their fields of view could simply be evaded until the individuals staffing the contraptions' other ends were taken care of. A security camera without human eyes behind its electronic one was merely an empty threat, a maimed tool. Nevertheless, that electronic eye did tend to have an infallible memory as a cohort, but of course that was switched off or forcibly purged if necessary after the cameras' operators had been similarly contended with, although perhaps in a more permanent fashion than the machines.

Mireille had seen it all; coded keypads, infrared alarm lasers, retina scans. And regardless of how complex a security system was there was always a way to bypass, or better yet disarm it, as the blonde had discovered during the course of her chosen vocation. With the knowledge she had gained she could make quite the tidy profit as a cat burglar if she were so disposed to a career change. Being a professional *and* an adept contract killer incorporated most if not all of the skills of a thief and a spy put together. Breaking and entering, the art of disguise, subterfuge and misdirection-if one wished to be a truly consummate assassin then these talents and more like them were required to be added to one's repertoire. After all, assassination targets were prone to surround themselves with a great deal of protection. Seldom a sniper rifle on a rooftop or at an open window was sufficient; it was the reason why such a method was labelled as amateurish.

Mireille lifted her head from the smashed camera and walked a few steps to the left side of the gate, before looking back over her shoulder at Kirika, the soft curve of a small, almost playful smile once more on her lips. "Let's tread lightly and keep the noise level to a whisper, okay?" she instructed with a light-hearted lilt. The woman turned around fully, and then drew her loaded Walther P99 from its holster, her left hand retrieving its companion piece-a silencer-from under her coat a moment later. "People who have their sleep disturbed do have a propensity to wake up cranky," Mireille went on as she securely attached the silencer to the end of her pistol. "And noisy late night callers are apt to invite considerably greater ire from them." She hoisted her gun upright in her hand and arched an expectant eyebrow at her counterpart.

"Understood," Kirika said, grasping the hint. She abided by her partner's 'suggestion' and pulled out her Beretta from her skirt's waistband behind her back, a silencer following from under the garment that was quickly fastened to the weapon.

Mireille nodded in approval, and then turned her head back to the gate. The black iron wrought structure was blessedly unlocked and even a tad ajar, meaning that she and Kirika didn't have to scale its tall bars to gain entry. It wouldn't have been especially difficult for the nimble duo, but two young women climbing over ten foot spiked rails in the middle of the night while haloed by the light of streetlamps wasn't exactly subtle and was better to be steered clear of. However, Ryosuke and Vincent had obviously already breached Laroque's security and had had the-albeit unintentional-courtesy to leave their access route open. It should simply be a matter of tracing the false Noir's footsteps until Mireille and Kirika caught up to them, the majority of the dangers having been already neutralised by tonight's first intruders into the estate. Or so the blonde hoped. Judging by the aggressively trounced security measures at the front gate, Ryosuke and Vincent were not loath to use lethal force against anything that stood in their path. Mireille trusted that they had continued in the same fierce style throughout their infiltration.

"With any luck those two will have cleared the entire way for us," Mireille remarked, voicing her thoughts for Kirika's benefit, even though she was certain the darkhaired girl had parallel hopes. But there was no harm in sharing one's feelings, particularly when on an assignment of sorts… and particularly these days, when Mireille was championing open and frequent communication between herself and her reticent partner. True, they had their own unique manner of conversing during 'business hours'; an instinctive one that was far beyond the level of mundane verbal communication, but when it came to personal feelings after hours they were both clearly inept at expressing themselves. It was Mireille's aspiration that that would change soon, but until then in her view every little bit helped.

Kirika merely mumbled her concurrence in her traditional fashion, but then Mireille hadn't expected much more. Change didn't happen overnight, even during a long night like this one.

Mireille slipped through the open gate and inside the compound-her introverted partner in tow-and instantly deviated from the illuminated gravel path leading to the mansion and onto the pitch-black section of lawn on her left instead, glad to be out of the light that laid her bare and back in the safety of the shadows' shroud. She then paused there in the murk, crouched low in the dewy grass with Kirika next to her, the pair delaying their approach for a few seconds to give their eyes time to adjust to the darkness.

As Mireille's night vision gradually kicked in, she slowly made out a handful of dark shapes scattered haphazardly across the grounds, predominantly in the left expanse where she and Kirika presently were. It didn't take the assassin long to realise that the silhouettes were in fact the bodies of more guards, put to death as Ryosuke and Vincent had stormed through. There had to be greater than half a dozen dead men lying about under the cloudy night's sky, their final resting place looking like the spot where they had originally fallen. No effort at all had seemingly been made on the false Noir's part to drag the carcasses into a secluded corner of the estate and suitably hide the evidence of their incursion. It was an act of either sloppiness or arrogance, but Mireille already knew the answer to that one. It would seem that Ryosuke and Vincent held nothing save contempt for their victims, impending and otherwise. In any case, the blonde now understood that people *had* been sent to investigate the abandoned front gate, it was just that none of them had lasted the distance there. Ryosuke and his partner had evidently utilised the pall of darkness covering the compound to their extreme advantage and systemically slaughtered them all on a first come, first kill basis. Mireille doubted whether any of the sentries had even seen their end coming.

The trail of corpses was a beneficial if macabre sight to Mireille, sketching an even clearer path for her and Kirika to follow. And follow it they did without a sound and at a swift pace, their pistols ready to be brought to bear against any surviving guard who made an unexpected appearance and threatened to compromise their stealthy infiltration. Mireille was a bit concerned about the presence of dogs on the premises as well, but thankfully there appeared to be no troublesome and generally vicious canines wandering around, or else they were tied up in their kennels somewhere, snoozing away like their owners in the mansion. Guard dogs were harder to deal with than their human counterparts; they had the habit of sniffing out a trespasser regardless of where she or he secreted themselves. The animals couldn't be reasoned with like human beings either; money and sex appeal counted for squat, and they held unwavering faith in their noses and instincts to not be deterred by misdirection… well, unless that misdirection involved masking one's scent, which was tricky to do and more bother than it was worth. Mireille found it much simpler to just shoot any inquisitive dog that detected her scent and wandered too close, then subsequently their handler a split second later depending on their proximity. A lost mutt was written off with significantly less concern than an actual person.

The disjointed, gruesome trail of limp-limbed bodies led to the west wing of Laroque's residence, and vanished around a corner of the building. Mireille and Kirika stuck close to the manor as they traced after it, the barren flowerbeds bordering its outer walls as much space as they would allow between them. Up this close the blonde assassin could see that a layer of moss or lichen coated the lower bricks of the house, while a thick covering of ivy and other viny plant life climbed trellises fastened to the walls, their tendrils stretching all the way to the second floor windows and if left to grow unchecked could very possibly reach the gutters if not the roof proper. If Mireille and Kirika had wished to they could probably use the trellises as a ladder and enter the mansion via an upper floor window. Although they didn't, it was still worthwhile to make note of-if they required a quick escape route while on the second level they could always clamber down the side of the house with relative ease and speed.

The two female assassins rounded the corner cautiously, wary of possible threats, before immediately discovering a set of steps that led to a side entrance to the manor, a couple of trashcans neighbouring it. As they moved closer they saw that the alternate entrance's door was wide open, but with only more darkness spilling outside. Ryosuke and Vincent had no doubt entered Laroque's house through there.

Mireille and Kirika placed their backs to the mansion's wall, heedless of the flowerbeds now, before edging nearer to the side entrance, the Corsican at the point as usual. She poked her blonde head carefully into the doorway and took quick stock of the interior, her sharp gaze darting this way and that, covering all angles. The doorway opened into a kitchen as old-fashioned as the exterior of the house, but it appeared well equipped with the occasional modern appliance discreetly positioned in amongst the outdated here and there, and was also in immaculate condition-Laroque must have hired hands, Mireille surmised. There wasn't a single bloodied corpse sullying the floor either, which did work to the spotless room's advantage. Dead bodies did have a tendency to spoil any décor.

The coast clear, Mireille signalled to Kirika that it was safe to proceed with a brusque wave of her hand, and then after bounding atop the uppermost step slinked inside the kitchen, her Walther's sight focusing on an open doorway ahead while she favoured a closed one to her left with a watchful eye. Kirika tagged along behind the woman, her own gaze momentarily zipping all over the room as she took in her new surroundings. It then finally settled on the hallway viewable through the open door in front of them, where Ryosuke and Vincent's unsightly trail resumed with gory grandeur.

If Laroque did have hired hands, then his maids were definitely going to have an unpleasant time cleaning the halls in the morning. Mireille's blue eyes left the closed door alone and moved back to the open doorway to join Kirika's, where she had noted during her first perusal of the kitchen that yet more guards lay massacred in an adjoining short corridor that terminated at a shut door, a corridor which also crossed perpendicularly with a second. Pale, diffused light produced from an unknown source shone from the latter hall's left and muted though it was, it was just enough to permit the woman and her colleague to distinguish the passages' deceased inhabitants in superior detail than they had with the sentries' likewise departed fellows outside, the corpses' faces being painted an eerie and appropriate deathly white.

Men in suits were sprawled on the floor and slouched against the walls in all manner of arrangements, and large amounts of their blood soaked the luxuriant carpeting with dark stains and not to mention their once clean and crisp clothing as well. As Mireille and Kirika crept into the corridor ahead of them and to the intersection with all due prudence, they saw that the grievous injuries inflicted upon the guards were the cause of such major haemorrhaging. Their wounds were chiefly localised to the neck and throat areas, and the Corsican observed that there was evidence of the garrotting she had seen on the guard at the gate on a few of the luckless men. Others had had their throats slit or stabbed with savage intensity, their arteries ruptured and the slash or thrust deep, oft cases to the bone. A couple of sentries even had their heads bent at nauseatingly odd angles, their necks obviously broken, likely with sheer brute force-a simple but rather inelegant method of killing that was beyond Mireille's own physical capability, not that she would be one to adopt the crude technique. There was also the sporadic guard who had received punctures with a blade to their back instead of their throat, with the noticeable intent to pierce a lung considering where it had been plunged. Not a single gunshot wound was to be seen, although there were a few handguns strewn about, the dropped firearms of the sentries who had managed to pull their weapons from their holsters before meeting the Reaper.

All in all, the carnage wrought along each of the two hallways was an impressive feat for what it was-so many slain without an apparent alarm being raised or even a retaliatory shot fired. Mireille deduced that by concentrating their attacks to the throat and neck, Ryosuke and Vincent had prevented their quarries from screaming or from making the slightest sound above a liquid gurgle, and hence thwarted the stricken guards from warning their comrades. The blows to the lungs had probably created a similar affect; as soon as air from the outside had invaded the breached organs merely continuing to breath would have been more than enough challenge for the victim. Still, it must have been very hard for the false Noir to actually inflict the silencing wounds to each guard before he could cry out, especially if more than one were alerted to their presence at the time. Ryosuke and Vincent had surely butchered the men with a speed and efficiency on par with Kirika's. A false Noir they may be, but it would seem that they did have the skill to merit the title. However, Mireille was not concerned. It wasn't as if she and Kirika were pushovers. And, after all, they had been the true Noir. A copy could never surpass the original, and an imitation had even less of a chance.

The hallways themselves where Ryosuke and Vincent's achievements were put on grisly display were in the same vein as the kitchen and the mansion's exterior; an archaic motif straight out of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was as if Mireille and Kirika had stumbled back in time somehow and right into a traditional manor house of that antiquated period. Oil paintings of people dressed in the customary attire of the past hundred to two hundred years hung on the walls together with correspondingly styled renditions of landscapes of Europe long ago lost to modernisation. Placed intermittently along the length of the hallway's walls were ornaments consisting of magnificently crafted vases and statuettes to name a couple, exhibited on small pedestals befitting the era they stemmed from.

Collectively the value of the objects in the corridors alone had to total in the hundred thousands-a grand fortune indeed. Any art dealer or thief would be downright ecstatic to get their hands on even one of the masterpieces Mireille saw; she was sure that the splattered blood marking some of the antiques would not deter them in the least. And it could probably be cleaned off rather easily, and without so much as a thought to how it got there given by their new owners. Albert Laroque was unmistakably an exceptionally rich man, with his security precautions clearly warranted. Maybe Ryosuke and Vincent weren't here for an assassination at all but in fact to pilfer a few choice artefacts. Mireille didn't honestly believe that, however it was still a possibility, albeit a slim one. She wouldn't know the false Noir's true intentions for definite until she actually came across them, and even then perhaps not. Ryosuke and Vincent wouldn't be alive for very long after the meeting, of course. And the Corsican wasn't the type to grant her targets any last words.

Mireille stopped in the middle of the crossroads dividing the hallways, Kirika mimicking in accordance to her older partner's action. The blonde assassin cast her eyes down the left span of corridor, where she had glimpsed an interesting sight in her initial cursory glance of the area that she had performed before she and Kirika had risked advancing further. At the end of the corridor was the origin of the pallid light that streaked weakly into the passage. A door stood wide open there, baring a room that's purpose was immediately obvious. Inside were a pair of guards-quite dead, naturally-one face down on the floor bleeding from his throat and the other sitting in a computer chair, his chin on his chest with the rest of his body just as slack. And in front of that man was a desk with a dozen television monitors stacked atop one another in three rows, no doubt the control centre for the security camera network set up around the manor. The equipment looked out of place in a house that was a tribute to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; a cubbyhole of modern technology in an antiquated world. However, the technology at the moment was about as effective as it would have been if utilised in that old era. All the monitors' screens displayed a noiseless snowstorm at night, black and white static in a never-ending tumult. Ryosuke and Vincent had evidently taken out the surveillance system, and in one fell swoop disabled all the cameras throughout the estate. It favoured Mireille and Kirika as much as it did their enemies, though; there was no need to worry about being captured on film whilst tiptoeing around the house.

The trail of bodies the young women had been using to direct them to their prey more or less concluded at the ghastly scene of mass murder at the corridors' junction, but both assassins espied a faint glow of light coming from the tiny crack formed between an ajar door and its doorjamb to their right, near the far end of the longer hallway. Like nighttime insects to a lamppost's light, Mireille and Kirika were attracted to it, stealing down the passageway towards the door, their pistols suddenly held just a little tighter in their ready hands.

Ryosuke and Vincent, their distorted reflections-they were near, very near. Mireille could practically feel it, like some sort of sixth sense; a sensation of inexplicable anticipation, although it was neither exciting nor uneasy, just… an impression of something up ahead. She was sure Kirika felt the same thing. It was the innate instincts of an assassin at work, an intuition that similarly forewarned one when an assailant was just around the corner or an unseen gun sight was being trained on them from afar. Mireille was sure the foundation of the strange sense was based squarely in logic rather than in some sort of Zen-like awareness, the feeling doubtless the product of external stimuli ignored by the conscious mind and instead analysed by the unconscious, such as sights and sounds just on the brink of perception. Regardless of the feeling's descent, the fact remained that the false Noir was very likely beyond that door; the Corsican was almost positive that they were. This long night was drawing to its conclusion. The lone executioners-Death-had arrived; let the final scene of this film noir commence.

Mireille and Kirika halted outside the door, close enough to perceive the intricate wood grain stylised on its varnished surface. The woman looked at her shorter partner for confirmation that she was prepared, though it was a superfluous gesture. As soon as her blue eyes locked with Kirika's brown, she knew by their stanch appearance that the darkhaired girl was ready-she was *always* ready. Though resolute the young assassin's gaze may be-hard even-it was not cruel or unfeeling in any way. Unwavering determination is all that existed in the orbs' still depths. Kirika was a girl with a gun and with the full intent to use it, yet a girl she remained-she had no penchant for murder in spite of the number of lives she had taken and her aptitude for it. A cold-blooded killer she was not. And never would be, if Mireille had her way. And never would be… again….

Mireille exhaled calmly and then held her next breath, before she suddenly burst into the room behind the door, shoving it completely open with her left shoulder as she strafed swiftly inside, bringing up her Walther in her right hand. Kirika sprung through the doorway a fraction of a second after her, sticking a metre away from the Corsican's side and brandishing her own firearm. It wasn't a stealthy entrance by any means, but Mireille had elected to charge in rather than creep inside to maintain the element of surprise indefinitely. She believed the sneaker approach would have been less effective and potentially treacherous; Ryosuke and Vincent quite possibly would have heard their entrance-virtually silent as it would have been-and then Mireille and Kirika's advantage over them would have been forfeit. Perhaps the woman was overestimating the men's abilities, but to underestimate them would be to invite danger. Therefore Mireille had decided to simply dash inside the room. It was noisy, but should catch the room's occupants unawares, regardless of who they were.

Mireille took in the surroundings of the room in a mere instant, but only a small part of her attention was dedicated to the chore. It was clearly a library or an exceptionally well-resourced study furnished in an identical theme as the rest of mansion, with ornate shelves packed almost to capacity with countless books lining the left and right walls from one end nearly completely to the other. A third and fourth set of shelves equally stocked with texts roosted above their mates on roughly four-foot wide hardwood balconies, each accessed by a stepladder constructed of the same material. They stood tall enough to touch the high ceiling of the rectangular library, much like the matching array of shelves below them that scraped the underside of their perch.

The tomes that made their home in the library were arranged in an orderly fashion on the shelves, not a speck of dust to be seen coating a single binding, and most if not all were bound in leather covers dyed in sombre hues; the trappings of classic books or very old ones, likely the second when taking into account the other rare and priceless items that resided on the premises. Mireille mused whether Laroque had amassed all these artefacts and ancient texts out of an interest in those fields, and that what she had been seeing while she and Kirika had traipsed through his house's halls were pieces of his collection. It would explain the sheer volume of items on display.

A few small round tables with accompanying cosy-looking chairs and a couple of two-seater sofas with cushions were present in the middle of the room, presumably placed there for readers to avail themselves of and relax in respectively while pouring over a book penned during a time long ago. There wasn't a book lying out of place on any of the brilliantly polished and finely crafted tables currently however, the majority of the tomes nestled away comfortably in their spots on the bookshelves. Yet there were some glaring gaps in amongst the texts sitting on the many shelves, several of them quite thick suggesting the removal of a number of books.

The missing tomes were accounted for where the greater bulk of Mireille's attention was focused; past the room's décor and towards a bulky dark oak desk and red wine coloured leather chair at the far end of the library, which were situated in front of a huge window made up of a trio of thinner ones with arched white frames, the central window the tallest of the three. Irregular, jumbled piles of books taken from their original resting places were assembled on the desk, numerous scattered across it, one or two even deposited seemingly without a care on the floor. And hunched over the stacks of tomes with their backs to Mireille and Kirika were two men, both sifting through the literary mess obviously in search of a specific title. One picked out and examined the contents of individual books with meticulous exactitude, while his companion rummaged around the heap with contrasting frenetic impetuousness, occasionally tossing books aside in frustration. The false Noir, Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu, just as Mireille had predicted.

A lamp on the desk provided illumination for the duo's labours, its light having been what had lured Mireille and Kirika to their location in the first place. It gently saturated the library in a soft orange glow akin to the setting sun, the twilight casting elongated shadows on the bookshelves and ceiling, the silhouettes of Ryosuke and Vincent the tallest of them all. Giant, distorted images of the killers stretched out from their feet, the limbs spindly and spider-like, warped to otherworldly proportions-more like monsters than men. Perhaps it was a glimpse into a form of mirror, the dark reflections of corrupt souls. Mireille wondered what her shadow-self looked like. She didn't check.

At the clamour of Mireille and her partner's dramatic and abrupt entrance, the hitmen immediately ceased their rummaging, although their subsequent reactions varied in tone rather significantly. Vincent spun around to face the opposite end of the room and its new occupants a scarce instant after Mireille had crossed the doorway's threshold, an extended switchblade with an edge of about four inches long gripped between his bared teeth, and a feral, maniacal grin splitting his features as a result. His amber eyes matched the ferocity of his grin, burning with a fierce intensity somehow made deeper by the understated light of the room, reminiscent of how a feline's eyes sparkled in places of low illumination. However, upon sighting Mireille he blinked, his eyes losing their glint and his grin no longer quite so crazed. Instead Vincent's expression became nigh on a leer of a lecherous old man… that wasn't that much different from the previous look, the blonde dryly reconsidered.

Ryosuke on the other hand didn't even bother turning around to greet his foes. He straightened to his full height and lowered his arms slowly to his sides at Mireille and Kirika's arrival-as if he had all the time in the world-and settled on merely looking over his right shoulder in the young women's direction, his pale profile exhibiting an utter calm and composure in spite of being taken by surprise and put at a potentially deadly disadvantage. There was contempt also; his one visible violet eye smouldering coldly with it through his white bangs while the thin compaction of his lips wordlessly spoke of distaste at the unwanted interruption.

Mireille noticed that clasped in Ryosuke's right hand was a length of piano wire, either end fastened to a black plastic handle. It was the kind of wire used for anything but inside pianos, with it's lightweight and non-metallic composition making it a handy tool of murder that could pass through metal detectors uncontested and be carried effortlessly on one's person. If Mireille were ever inclined to take a literal 'hands-on' style to the fundamentals of her job it would most certainly be one of the instruments she would employ. It appeared that Ryosuke thought on a similar vein to the blonde assassin; it was clear that he was responsible for the garrotting marks on the throats of the guards seen earlier, and, while on the subject, that his associate Vincent laid claim to the knife wounds. But as for who snapped the odd sentry's neck, it could have been either of them. Or even both.

While their responses for the most part differed, one particular thing was mutual amongst both Ryosuke and Vincent-neither exhibited any trace of fear whatsoever. The fact didn't unnerve Mireille however; it simply meant that the men were not trifling poseurs like so many other people who inhabited the underworld. But the woman had known that for quite some time now, ever since she had exchanged fire with one half of the false Noir in Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental. Pretenders who merely talked big but were in reality just small fries would not have been able to accomplish the feats of the kind Ryosuke and Vincent had. What's more they were supposedly well known in the underbelly of Japan's society and were allied with Kaede-the sharpest thorn in Soldats' side presently-to boot, with one of the men her brother no less. With skill came reputation, and Ryosuke and Vincent were not for want in either.

"Caught in the act red-handed," Mireille remarked sardonically in a cool and self-assured voice as she moved further into the library, repositioning herself to the rear of the mini lounge running down its centre-a spot better suited to imparting cover in the event of a firefight. Her pistol's sight remained steady on the immobile Ryosuke's back as she sidestepped carefully away from the room's doorway, Kirika's Beretta imitating the woman's Walther as she followed the blonde's lead, except that its target was the man's shorter companion, Vincent, and his chest. "I never knew you two were such avid book lovers that you would resort to petty burglary."

Mireille had been tempted to simply blaze away with her handgun at Ryosuke and Vincent's defenceless backs as soon as she had seen them, yet despite that near overpowering compulsion she had somehow managed to stay her hand… for now. While a scant couple of days earlier this week she would not have hesitated for even the smallest sliver of a second at blasting several 9mm Parabellum rounds the false Noir's way, now, after the men's prior behaviour tonight, her curiosity was grudgingly piqued. People had died, people who had been assets to her trade… as vulgar and trivial as Simon and his associates had been. Still, Mireille wanted explanations as to why they'd had to give up their lives, and, in relation to that answer, she was confident she would also learn why the false Noir were more or less ransacking a well-to-do man's library in suburban Paris. Moreover, she was *not* a mindless tool of Soldats or Breffort's unquestioningly carrying out their bidding with blinkers on, and nor was Kirika; they both had their own free will to handle matters as *they* pleased and always would. Desperation to stop the deterioration of her close relationship with her partner had fuelled the Corsican's passion to slay Ryosuke and Vincent immediately during their last confrontation, but this time with a more level head on her shoulders and lighter heart in her chest the woman could regard the situation with a judicious mind. It was another troubling reminder of why sentimentality had no place amid those who lived by the gun.

Vincent cautiously reached up to his mouth and removed the switchblade from between his teeth, his rich amber eyes shifting warily from Kirika's raised weapon to Mireille's, knowing that to provoke them with aggressive movement would cause bullets to fly and people to die-namely him. "If it isn't babe and brat," he then drawled with a snide smirk as he lowered his arm with the same earlier degree of prudence, his broken French dripping with mocking. "Took you long enough. You know your crispy predecessors were lot better at finding us."

"Perhaps," Mireille replied icily, her expression just as frosty as her tone. But only for an instant. The next moment her face brightened, easily schooled to cordiality attributable to frequent practice, a faint taunting smile teasing her lips upwards. "Yet I must say your sloppy handiwork in the shop off Rue de Prony was most helpful in pointing us in the right direction," she then retorted haughtily to the triad affiliate, although her eyes stayed firmly on Ryosuke, trusting unconditionally that Kirika had the other man well in hand, just as the girl likewise trusted that she had the tall hitman restrained.

Out of the corner of her eye Mireille saw an angry sneer flash across Vincent's face before his own features were disciplined, the demeaning lopsided leer resurfacing. So she had struck a nerve. Interesting. It appeared that Vincent was indeed a hothead as the Corsican had suspected from his deeds-or more to the point, from the extent of the butchery inflicted upon his victims-thus far, albeit a hothead with his temper under tight rein. However, there were always methods to slacken those reins or even loose them outright, and it appeared that Vincent possibly drew on killing as an outlet for his rage-the period when he himself let his control wane, voluntarily or not. Small, seemingly inconsequential details like this on a target had proved useful to Mireille in the past; every facet of a hit's personality regardless of how minor had the potential to be used against them, be they actual character traits or behavioural habits. A professional assassin gathered these little gems and utilised them as they could, turning that late night cigarette break in an alley into a death sentence for their target, one markedly faster than the sluggish ravages of cancer.

"Soldats…" Ryosuke suddenly uttered in a soft whisper as he tilted his head back towards the ceiling, his profile taking on a distant look while the lid of his sole visible eye sagged lazily. "Their veins indeed run deep and long, the very world the body of the beast. Where there is no such thing as coincidence… just ever watchful eyes." His words, while somewhat cryptic and more than a little poetic were expressed in perfect, flowing French-a huge improvement over his partner's meagre ability in the language. In addition they sounded as if they were spoken primarily to himself, the black clad man temporarily oblivious to his company in the library with him.

Nevertheless, Mireille did not miss Ryosuke's observations on the global, ancient, and secret organisation. That he-and by association Vincent-had admitted knowing of the existence of Soldats out loud bestowed extra credibility to the soundness of Breffort's briefing on Kaede and her pseudo Black Hands that had taken place weeks ago in his office. While it would have been unlikely if Ryosuke and his counterpart had not been aware of the clandestine group, it was still comforting to know for sure that they did. One never could tell with Soldats. They weaved deception like a spider weaved a web-intricate and ensnaring, with escape an extremely difficult if not impossible prospect for the captured fly. But in contrast to a spider's web, the fly rarely realised when it had been caught in the network of threads. And that was where the real danger lied, a danger Mireille was all too conscious of.

Vincent favoured Ryosuke with a sidelong look for a fleeting moment before his eyes snapped back to Mireille and Kirika again, along with the pistols levelled in his and his comrade's direction. "Yeah," he agreed, although the Corsican assassin didn't believe he truly comprehended the white-haired man's statements, "and they hire young, too. On top of usual Soldats dogs and now Soldats bitches-as pretty as they are-" He inclined his head Mireille's way, leering at her wantonly as he licked his upper lip in what he probably thought to be an enticing manner. However all it enticed was the bitter taste of bile to fill the back of the blonde's throat. "-We have a cute Soldats puppy!" Vincent snickered and grinned condescendingly at Kirika, but the stoic-or was that naïve?-girl merely stared back at him blankly, unaffected by the jibe.

"You'd be surprised at just how young," Mireille said without emotion, her veneer of geniality gone not due to the barbs-although they didn't best please her, either-but due to the foul memories they invoked. She knew very well at exactly how young an age Soldats was willing to pluck their recruits from. A childhood destroyed with the murder of her parents and elder brother, another corrupted by the abhorrent deeds she was forced to perform-and both children owning their torment and loss of innocence to the twisted machinations of a heartless woman belonging to the organisation. Oh yes, Mireille was intimately versed in how low Soldats could sink in the age of choosing their 'followers' and in their morals, if the group even had any principles of decent merit to start with.

"But despite what you think, we are *not* members of Soldats," Mireille continued with emphatic insistence, her voice stern and brooking no mistake. She wasn't strictly lying per se; neither she nor Kirika were part of the society. While it could be said they were working for Breffort, a prominent follower of the worldwide group, it was by their own decision; Mireille preferred to perceive it as working for themselves, with their goals happening to coincide with Soldats'. 'Dogs' they were certainly not.

"Oh?" Vincent said with exaggerated curiosity, lifting an inquisitive eyebrow and pulling a face to complement it. "Then, why you come after us? Besides the obvious…." He winked mischievously at the beautiful blonde and leered at her yet again, as if some perverted attraction to his ego had brought her before him and Ryosuke. Sure, Vincent's remarkably good looks could have also been considered as a lure, but in this case the adage 'beauty is only skin deep' couldn't have been more spot on.

"Why do you think?" Mireille snapped, frowning slightly. A strange sensation of anxiousness started to creep into the assassin's chest from somewhere deep down below, an unpleasant tingling progressively flooding the area slowly that seemed to cause it to constrict with increasing tension, as if an invisible hand were pressing down on her breastbone. "You stole something of ours," she went on undaunted regardless, ignoring the odd and troubling feeling. "It may not be something we like, or even want, but it's ours nonetheless." The woman's voice lowered to a grim timbre, a dark cloud passing over her eyes. "It's a name *earned*, not given, nor taken." Mireille's expression then darkened to mirror her gaze, recalling her own folly and ignorance in dubbing herself and Kirika as Noir without any genuine knowledge of the full significance of the name. "And its price…. The Black Hands are called as such for a reason; only through both parties staining their own black with grievous sins can they be truly worthy of it."

Mireille heard Kirika shift her weight uneasily, a subtle rubbing of a shoe sole on carpet. The girl understood, perhaps even understanding better than she. A designation earned through violence and murder, through showing no pity, no remorse. The Eternal Darkness… Mireille mused whether Noir were christened that because its two halves resided always in shadow, the light having shunned them for their immoral transgressions. Noir, the Black Hands, the Eternal Darkness… so many names yet all with identical undertones, identical meanings. It was no wonder Mireille despised the title and its connection to her and Kirika so much.

Ryosuke and Vincent merely looked at Mireille for a few moments, before the older gangster bowed his head, his stark white hair hiding his face from view. "I see," he spoke softly and in his native Japanese tongue, once again his words apparently for his own ears, "so that was her motive. Hmph."

Mireille wasn't sure whether or not Ryosuke was aware she could comprehend every single word he was murmuring, but she deliberately didn't react to the statement in any way. Feigning ignorance was a typical and widely used technique of lulling a careless individual into a false sense of security, and consequently enticing her or him into making a slip-up that could then be employed against them. Furthermore, there was very little sense in freely giving information to those you didn't trust without receiving anything in return. 'Take as much as you can and give only what you must'. Wise words to live by… that is, unless one happened to be involved in a romantic relationship with a cute, but introverted, Japanese girl. But naturally significant others were exempt from the axiom.

As could be expected, Kirika-Mireille's aforementioned 'significant other'-didn't respond to Ryosuke's words either, but with her distinctly Japanese features it was a marvel he didn't realise that at least she understood him. Perhaps the man simply didn't care who heard him, be they friend or foe. It certainly would fit his profile of being supremely arrogant. At any rate, Mireille wondered whom 'her' was referring to. Ryosuke's sister, Kaede, perhaps? She was the only female the blonde knew who had links to the black clad killer.

Ryosuke raised his head, his visible violet eye swinging around to favour Mireille with a piercing Cyclops glare. "So Noir stands before us," he declared in a louder voice than his previous though without fanfare of any sort, obviously not very impressed being in the presence of a purported legend. But to Mireille, it could have been as if he had bellowed the words from a high cliff top. The peculiar anxiousness that had been steadily building inside her was suddenly recognised as what it really was-dread, and dread well justified, now. In concert with that insight the tightness in her chest seized her with full force, the unseen hand on her breastbone a vice-like pressure that she believed was on the verge of crushing her. She felt queasy, her stomach churning all of a sudden like an ocean assaulted by an unexpected storm, once calm currents rudely unsettled by its fierce winds.

Ryosuke and Vincent did not know the faces or the real names behind Noir; they never had-until now, that is. Mireille cursed herself for her foolishness, both past and present. It had been a gamble accepting Breffort's mission, a gamble whether Ryosuke and Vincent knew her and Kirika, the identities of the authentic Black Hands. But apparently they had not. It had been a gamble lost, and where the stakes were high indeed. However, when up against a house of Soldats' like the dice always came up showing snake eyes-this particular house always won in one form or another. It was a fact Mireille had been aware of as a result of her prior dealings with the organisation yet had elected to disregard anyway, letting her fears over her and her partner's quiet life possibly being shattered sometime in the future if they didn't act to fog her judgement, and in turn allow herself to be manipulated. Sentimentality yet again to blame, and all evidently unnecessary. Hunting the men who had adopted the ancient title of Noir, forsaking a life which had up until that point been peaceful ever since the events at the Manor, compelling a reluctant and emotionally scarred Kirika to take up arms once again-all of this could have been prevented if the Corsican had simply stuck by her vow to never again be caught up in Soldats affairs, instead of permitting her heart to overrule her brain. Now that peaceful life was most certainly shattered by Mireille's own doing, with backing out of Breffort's mission bordering on impossible. She and Kirika were now forced to see it through to the end, their faces having been revealed and now marked by their quarry.

Mireille's countenance registered her distress for only a second despite the magnitude of her horrible realisation, the woman quickly recovering herself although internally she remained perturbed, to put it in the lightest vein. It was senseless dwelling on something that couldn't be changed… no matter how much she wished it to. Her and Kirika's assignment was virtually at its conclusion anyway; they had Ryosuke and Vincent at their mercy. She took solace in that. It would all be over momentarily.

"Noir?" Vincent said in disbelief mixed with derision, looking askance at Mireille and Kirika while he smirked scornfully. "You mean there is actually a *real* Noir? And *these* two are it? Seriously?" He talked in rapid-fire but faultless Japanese rather than in the French he frequently mangled, reverting back to a language he was more accustomed to in his incredulity.

"Of course Noir is real," Ryosuke replied in a bitter cold tone as his dark ringed eye flicked to his partner, also lapsing back into Japanese. "*She* wouldn't have had us assume the name, otherwise." The tall hitman's lone visible eye then found Mireille once more, before he at long last turned around to face her and his other adversary full on, the expression on his gaunt visage grim and his pitiless violet gaze boring into the blonde's own blue. "Who better to remove us from the picture than Europe's supposed greatest assassins?" he concluded in French, seemingly for his Corsican enemy's sake.

A short peep of a gasp was suddenly emitted from Kirika, cutting the tension that had been steadily escalating between Ryosuke and Mireille, and causing their hard shared stare to be disrupted as the former participant turned his eyes to the source of the interruption. "Langonel's Manuscript…" the lithe girl whispered in surprise as she angled her head slightly to the side, breaking her absolutely rigid, motionless stance for the first time since she had entered the library; reminiscent of statue being revived from its petrification. Her eyes strayed away from Vincent and to Ryosuke instead… or more accurately, to the book he held in his previously obscured left hand.

"Langonel's…?" Mireille half-repeated in amazement, by some incredible exertion of willpower managing to keep her gaze from deserting her designated target and instead gawk wide-eyed and open mouthed at Kirika next to her, wondering how her colleague recognised the text. To the blonde the tome in Ryosuke's hand looked like any other in the library; bound in brown leather cracked with age, and thick comprising of hundreds of pages, their edges discoloured to a pale yellow over the many decades. But admittedly she had never actually seen a copy of the book where Soldats' and Noir's origins were documented despite her and her partner's fervent search for it in the past-all they had unearthed was that all copies were allegedly destroyed, which was clearly an erroneous belief now. Yet in truth Mireille had forgotten all about Langonel's Manuscript ever since she had let Kirika leave her side and return to the Manor and Altena's 'care'. Her priorities and thoughts had been focused on a different, much more important matter than a mere book back then.

"Hey, you found it!" Vincent exclaimed in jubilation and still in Japanese. He grinned happily at his companion, the broad smile causing him to appear more like a beautiful woman than ever. "Does this mean we can go home now?"

"I'm afraid we can't allow that," Mireille declared sternly in French as she lifted her gun a tad higher for emphasis, spoiling the triad member's elation. But the blonde was feeling quite a bit better herself, her earlier restlessness somewhat alleviated. If the purpose of Ryosuke and Vincent's being in Paris was to retrieve the apparently sole surviving copy of Langonel's Manuscript, then it was safe to assume that the men indeed did yearn to become Noir. Which meant that they would eventually get it into their heads that the true Noir would have to be rubbed out before they could be considered as the genuine article. Perhaps then it wasn't for nothing that Mireille and Kirika had decided to embark down the black path once again. At least it was a little consolation for the sacrifices they'd had to make. She did still feel guilty however, but she had done so ever since Breffort's briefing. She doubted that sentiment would dissipate any time soon, even after Kirika had laid down her gun to rest once again.

Ryosuke and Vincent looked at Mireille in surprise, although the emotion was more noticeable in the latter man. The Corsican assassin was aware of what she had allowed to let slip-she understood Japanese, or enough to comprehend its spoken form at any rate. But it was of no consequence, taking into account that in the following minute the gangsters would have both ceased to breathe.

"You speak Japanese?" Ryosuke said, obviously taken aback by the revelation despite his taciturn disposition. He glanced at Kirika for a moment, and then returned his gaze to Mireille. "I suppose I can understand why. Strange to see a Japanese girl of her age paired with a woman like yourself, and going by the name of Noir. You must have an interesting story to tell."

"Not one you'll ever hear," Mireille said with menace. She still talked in French, preferring to use that language to communicate with outsiders while here in France. It was the first time she had encountered anybody who had spoken in Japanese to her since meeting Kirika in Japan, and it did not sit well with her. Japanese was the tongue she and Kirika used as a private means of conversing with each other and to segregate strangers from their own little world. But if those strangers knew that language, then it was as if Mireille and Kirika's world was no longer so private, no longer so sacred; that the world consisted of more than just the two of them. Yet another reason to kill Ryosuke and Vincent, to kill the interlopers in her and her partner's private lives.

"Wait a minute, you mean to tell me you speak Japanese? Both of you?" Vincent cried, either not hearing Mireille's threat-no, promise-or simply ignoring it. "I thought the brat was raised here or something and only knew French! Damn it, I was struggling with that stupid language for nothing!"

"Are you sure you want to do this here?" Ryosuke inquired carefully of the blonde assassin, blocking out his comrade's whining. "Guards still roam this place."

"Yes," Mireille insisted, aware that he wasn't looking to avoid a fight, only to avoid one happening here. She and Kirika had tried to slay him and Vincent; it was not something one of Ryosuke's-or his partner's-character forgave or forgot easily. Just like Mireille did not forgive them. "You interfered in our lives… and I-we-want that book." Her desires for the tome were somewhat of an afterthought, although serious nonetheless. She didn't know how she and Kirika had overlooked Laroque's copy of Langonel's Manuscript residing in their home city of Paris during their hunt for the text-however, the Paris copy was supposed to have been lost in the fires of World War II-but regardless, she believed it would be best if it was in their possession. The book was related to the legend of Noir, after all. Maybe it would be even better if it were destroyed like all of its fellows, so nobody else Soldats follower or Noir aspirant could read of its words and attempt to establish another pair of Black Hands.

"Then we have a problem," Ryosuke replied, slipping his piano wire into his right coat pocket, though keeping his hand in plain sight throughout. His body tensed as he prepared himself, his shoulders straightening, his muscles strengthening.

"Yes. We do," Mireille stated simply. And then she pulled the trigger of her Walther P99. The already set striker was launched forwards into the gun, generating an explosive discharge that in turn propelled a 9mm Parabellum round out of its casing and down the silencer-extended barrel, straight at Ryosuke's chest-and all within the blink of an eye.

The bullet slammed into the upper left side of the gangster's torso, where his heart beat beneath the flesh and bone, and the impact caused him to jerk in the direction of the shot. He retained his footing however, and in spite of the by all rights mortal blow his face remained remarkably impassive, with scarcely a hint of a furrow in his brow.

Mireille, undeterred by Ryosuke's stoicism, rapidly followed up her first shot with another, and then another and another, sending two, three, then four muted slugs into his body. Yet each shot was only met with another flinch from the white-haired killer and a dull thud against his jet-black overcoat-no howls of pain, no spurts of blood; just aloof defiance, the man's expression almost mocking contrary to its detached veneer, as if challenging the blonde assassin while silently laughing at her unproductive efforts.

It took less than a second for Mireille's astute mind to comprehend why her bullets weren't affecting Ryosuke as they would a normal person, and consequently why the several shots she had fired at the man when she had initially clashed with him at the hotel hadn't fazed him. His overcoat was bulletproof. Mireille suspected it must be fashioned with more than just mainstream Kevlar, however. The stiff, nigh on unyielding manner in which the garment moved suggested that underneath the reinforced mesh of tough fibres dwelled a layer of interlocking plates, either hard baked ceramic or perhaps even stronger but heavier iron or steel, although if that was the case the overall weight of the overcoat must inflict a tremendous burden on the wearer-Ryosuke would have to possess a robust musculature hidden beneath his clothes to just stand upright. On top of the Kevlar and protective plates the black outer material of the overcoat had been treated with some sort of protective compound, giving it a glossy sheen that could easily be mistaken for the lustre of burnished leather to the untrained eye. On the whole, Ryosuke's overcoat could be equated to a modern day suit of armour-and him a black knight, in more ways than one-offering true resistance to gunfire unlike standard 'bulletproof' vests. But while it was a notable illustration of ingenuity, it wasn't anything Mireille hadn't seen before. She recalled an equivalent tactic having been used by one of Altena's enclave at the Manor, except that particular follower had worn what had looked like an actual breastplate from medieval times under her robes.

In spite of his protection, Mireille believed that it still must hurt Ryosuke a great deal to be shot. The armoured exterior and interior of the overcoat would decrease a bullet's velocity considerably, but his body would still be left to endure the remainder of its kinetic energy, which would certainly be no small amount. Indeed, there was a good chance his slender and athletic build belayed an immense brawn.

But for all of the defence Ryosuke's overcoat granted him, his head remained uncovered and open to attack. Obviously sensing Mireille's intentions, Ryosuke swiftly raised his forearm to protect his face-his movement a blur of black-at the exact moment the woman redirected her aim to that vulnerable spot. Two rounds pounded into the intercepting limb and a third struck the centre of the gangster's open palm, the gloved hand closing into a fist after the hit.

Mireille held her fire then, the end of her pistol smoking but with naught to show for it. In answer to the temporary ceasefire from the blonde, Ryosuke relaxed his taut posture a tad and straightened himself to a more upright position, standing once again at his full height. As he did so he lowered his arm slowly from over his face and to his side, his fist opening to drop the squashed remnants of a 9mm Parabellum slug to the floor.

"Impressive," Mireille remarked dryly as the bullet bounced along the carpet by the snow white-haired killer's feet, noting that her target's gloves were outfitted with similar elements to that of his overcoat. She imagined that sustaining a punch from his armour-plated fists would not be advisable. "Now this time catch one in your teeth."

Ryosuke didn't respond to the sarcastic comment, at least not verbally. Instead he suddenly burst into motion with a speed that verged on inhuman, comparable with the likes of Kirika and Chloe, his weighty overcoat plainly no hindrance to him. He reached into his coat with his free hand in one fluid movement before Mireille even had a clue he *was* moving, and in the next instant a huge gleaming metal object was drawn from inside the garment's dark depths. Ryosuke angled his body so it was side-on to the Corsican in a flick of rigid black Kevlar, and levelled the object squarely at her chest with deliberate slowness in contrast to his prior alacrity. As such, Mireille was provided with a good look at the object-at the gun.

Ryosuke's firearm was the largest handgun Mireille had ever laid eyes on, its sheer size putting all Magnum variants to shame. Yet this pistol-hand-cannon more like-was definitely not of the .357 or .44 family, although it did share a vague resemblance to a heavily modified .44 Magnum revolver. Instead it screamed of a custom model and make which had to be independently commissioned.

The gun was crafted in gleaming silver metal of the purest quality, polished until it was akin to a mirror, the reflections on the weapon's surface crisp and clear. Its handle on the other hand was black rubber and contoured for a sure grip. It was a revolver, a six-shooter by the looks of it, but the bevelled cylinder was drastically longer than a usual firearm of its type. Whatever calibre of ammunition the pistol took was positively not the standard handgun fare.

In addition to the pistol's elongated cylinder, its the barrel had been lengthened and weighted underneath with a rectangular block of metal, no doubt to counter the hefty mass of the rest of the gun and sufficiently balance it for accurate use. On the bottom edges of both sides of the counterweight Japanese characters had been neatly etched in ebony, however what it said was a mystery to Mireille. She suspected too from its total size and heavy appearance that the magnitude of the pistol's recoil had to be formidable; it would need a strong and steady hand to handle effectively, something Ryosuke no doubt boasted especially if his armoured coat was made up of metal plates.

Mireille kicked the round table in front of her over onto its side and immediately ducked down into a crouch behind it, its outer edge not even having hit the floor before she was seeking shelter from it. Barely an eighth of a second later a monumental boom resounded around the library as Ryosuke fired his unique weapon, and Mireille could have sworn she had felt something scrape over her head and cause her blonde hair to flap as she had dropped into her defensive position. Moreover, the din of the blast was so loud she was certain that it'd had the potential to actually rock the study's books in their shelves and rattle the window. It was now of little surprise why Ryosuke had opted to use piano wire to dispose of his portion of guards rather than his gun. There was no silencer in the world that could mute his pistol's roar, not without the device being blown apart after a single use and unleashing the weapon's bellow anyway.

Looking at the deep bullet hole that had been gouged in the wall across from the tall gangster as a result of his wayward opening shot, Mireille also ascertained that Ryosuke's handgun was responsible for turning Ezza's face into mincemeat and for the violent evacuation of his head's contents. Normally telling two bullet holes apart was difficult to say the least, even for someone with a practiced and sharp eye reminiscent of Mireille's, but with Ryosuke's gun it was a lot less tricky simply due to its handiwork being distinctly larger than any other pistol's… and twin to a rifle round's. The Corsican wondered if her black-garbed adversary had tailored his pistol to take rifle ammunition. The evidence thus far did point to that conclusion.

Mireille gritted her teeth and quickly bowed her head, covering it with her free hand for added protection as a second boom rung out and a chunk of the table she was using as a shield abruptly flew over her. The chunk careered off towards the back wall and collided with a vase sitting on a stand against it, smashing the once fine and valuable ornament to worthless pieces. The table was obviously no match against the power of Ryosuke's custom pistol; while its base was made of dense wood that helped to keep it stationary, its actual top was light and flimsy. Hiding behind it was about as effective as using a sheet of paper for cover. It would be smart for Mireille to relocate before the gangster's next shot took off her head instead of another bite out of the useless table.

Using her free hand as a prop, Mireille rolled deftly away from the table at the same time a bullet from Ryosuke's gun tore straight through its surface in an explosion of splinters-right where the woman's lower back had been an instant before. Relieved to have escaped sure death for now, she completed her roll on her feet behind the arm of one of the sofas that was near the table, and then fell onto her left side, her Walther clasped in both hands and her countenance a picture of fierce concentration. Casting her eyes under the sofa and through its elaborately curled wooden legs, she espied Ryosuke's feet and shins just visible in between the front opening of his overcoat. She lined up his right foot in her pistol's sights without hesitation and then fired a handful of shots, hoping that besides his head the other parts of his body uncovered by his coat and clad in normal clothes were also vulnerable.

To Mireille's displeasure and progressively mounting concern, her bullets ricocheted harmlessly off Ryosuke's boots in a series of sparks, the sole evidence of her well-placed shots the fresh scuffs and nicks marking their black leather surface and adding to the myriad of others already present, no doubt mementos from previous gunfights. Apparently his boots were fortified with armoured plates like his overcoat was, and unfortunately they climbed high enough to protect his shins. It looked like headshots were the only plausible means of killing this troublesome foe-no easy task when considering his lightning fast reflexes and his readiness to draw on them to shield his face when called for.

Mireille inwardly cursed her failure to inflict any harm upon her enemy up to now and wiggled on her stomach behind the couch before climbing to her feet, her back to it. She kept low, however, rising only to a crouch as more gunfire-three shots to be exact-from Ryosuke came her way, the high calibre rounds making short work of the sofa's plush padding. Little bits of fluff were ejected in a spurt as each slug ripped through the piece of furniture from front to back, the perforating shots narrowing missing the blonde assassin by pure luck alone.

With Ryosuke's pistol emptied of its small load of ammunition, Mireille decided to take the opportunity to return fire and perhaps drive a bullet into his skull while doing so. She whirled around to face the man, peeking cautiously over the back of the sofa with her gun raised ahead of her. She observed the hitman standing on the other side of the couch shove Langonel's Manuscript inside his overcoat while he flipped open the cylinder of his weapon and shook out the golden expended casings to the floor, before replacing them one by one with rounds retrieved from a pocket of his coat with his then free hand. The woman noticed that the bullets he took out were 7.62mm NATO rounds, normally used in assault and sniper rifles such as the Heckler & Koch G3 series and the NDM-86 Dragunov. The sight proved her earlier deductions as correct; Ryosuke indeed was firing rifle ammunition from his custom pistol.

As soon as Mireille popped her head out from behind the couch Ryosuke spun around so that his back was facing her, and covered his head with his left arm. The blonde fired a burst of 9mm rounds at him, aiming for his head, but all they struck were his bulletproof arm and high collar of his overcoat. Evidently not appreciating being interrupted while reloading his weapon, with a flick of his wrist Ryosuke slammed the partially replenished cylinder back into its home in the pistol and then reached around his body and stuck his gun past his left ribs, its barrel directed behind him at Mireille. The Corsican assassin whipped her head back behind cover-as poor as it was-and then dropped flat on the floor on her stomach as a series of booms resonated off the walls of the library, before more stuffing from the ravaged sofa drifted softly onto her back.

Mireille ejected the spent clip from her Walther P99 and hastened to replace it with a new one, envisioning that Ryosuke was doing much the same except a single bullet at a time. Events were not exactly ensuing like the woman would have preferred. She had expected Ryosuke and Vincent-a self-proclaimed Noir-to be challenging opponents, but this was tough even for someone as experienced as her. She could hear the cacophony of a shootout between two different models of Beretta's-one spitting muffled rounds, the other uninhibited-taking place in the right hand side of the room across from her, indicating that Kirika was exchanging fire with Vincent but as of yet had failed to kill him. Obviously Mireille's partner wasn't faring any better than her.

Mireille slid a full magazine into her pistol and pulled back the slide, chambering the first bullet. She then rose to her knees, preparing to take another stab at striking Ryosuke in the head. Hardly a minute had passed since the opening shot had been fired, but that had been long enough in her mind. If what Ryosuke had said was true not all of Laroque's nightshift sentries had been slain. Some of the survivors had to have heard the firefight currently underway in the mansion's library, and not to mention the sleeping members of the household too, including Laroque himself; Ryosuke's gun was loud enough to wake the dead, let alone living people slumbering in the middle of the night. Mireille had to eliminate the violet-eyed killer post-haste, before the situation deteriorated further with the arrival of the estate's guards.

* * *

"Catch, kid!" Vincent yelled the instant Mireille had stopped talking, hurling his switchblade in an underarm throw at Kirika.

Kirika had fired her Beretta M1934 at the precise moment she had heard Mireille's Walther P99 go off, the brusque sound a cue for the girl to commence her attack against Vincent while the blonde similarly dealt with his partner. So close were the two shots that they had been virtually indistinguishable from one another, nearly in sync.

However, in spite of this swiftness Vincent had reacted before Kirika. Not necessary because he had sharper or faster reflexes than her, but simply because his actions were unrestrained, the man following no one's lead. The gangster had not even bothered to wait for hostilities to be initiated by Mireille before he had acted with lethal intent. As soon as her closing words had left the blonde woman's lips, Vincent's knife had been flying end over end through the air, just a tiny fraction of a second sooner than Kirika's squeeze of her pistol's trigger. But that infinitesimal discrepancy was enough to alter the outcome of what should have been a straightforward execution.

In response to the blade sailing unerringly her way Kirika was forced to twist her flexible body aside to dodge it, the weapon spinning past her neck and lodging itself deeply in the wall behind her with a 'thunk'. As a result of her instinctive evasion her aim was spoiled, but only by a small margin, no more than a couple of millimetres. However it was a sufficient amount for Vincent to take advantage of. As his right arm stretched outwards and tossed the switchblade from his hand, he skewed his body to one side, the combination of Kirika's delayed shot and slightly disrupted aim causing her 9mm round to skim harmlessly by his stomach, the bullet instead tearing a hole in his suit jacket, it fluttering open with his movement. In the same motion Vincent dexterously drew a Beretta M92F Elite from a holster strapped underneath his jacket with his left hand, and then fired a string of shots at Kirika across his body immediately after the gun had cleared its resting place.

Kirika dived to her right to avoid the incoming fire that instead dotted the back wall with a constellation of holes, and answered the rapid barrage with her own deluge of bullets as she soared sidelong through the air, her Beretta wielded solely in her right hand while the incline of her left limb helped to stabilise the trajectory of her near horizontal leap. Vincent, not to be outdone, bounded nimbly backwards into a dive of his own, all the while blazing wildly away with his own model of Beretta in a single hand, his right arm employed in an alike fashion to his younger assailant's left.

The two combatants had launched themselves in opposite directions and in disparate manners; Kirika flying a few feet above the floor on her right side, while Vincent travelled parallel to her on his back. 9mm slugs whizzed a whisker by both parties' limber forms as casings rained down from their respective Berettas, supple muscles bending with amazing shows of flexibility as both contorted themselves in just the right way to allow a bullet to slip past them and leave their body unscathed. It was as if Kirika and Vincent were evenly matched, neither girl nor man successfully attaining an edge above the other. But then suddenly the deciding factor reared its head in an audible click that could be heard even above the commotion of the fierce duel.

The slide of Kirika's pistol snapped backwards, signifying that an expended clip now resided within the weapon, the once effective tool of murder reduced to a worthless lump of metal. Her eyes widened slightly and her heart skipped beat, but it wasn't out of fear, at least not exactly. It was more out of unease at the implications of the empty gun. Without the ability to return fire Kirika's life was put in greater jeopardy, doubly so in this aerial duel with Vincent-to be pressed onto purely the defensive would mean her opponent's aim was no longer hindered by him having to elude her shots, which consequently meant that the chances of her failing to dodge the subsequent bullets from him grew significantly. And Kirika couldn't die yet-not here, not now. To do so would place Mireille in abject danger, outnumbered by two skilful foes desiring her death-the odds of her partner surviving without her dedicated support were not in the blonde's favour. Kirika had an oath to uphold and a penance she eternally, vainly, sought to achieve. She wasn't allowed to die yet, nor did she want to, not while the woman she loved still lived. She *had* to protect Mireille.

Vincent's Beretta Elite, with its larger magazine capacity than Kirika's pistol, continued to fire at the suddenly defenceless girl, but as the hail of lead streaked towards her a strange feeling settled over her, a sort of… resolute calm. It was the best she could describe it-a gritty clarity, a resolve that told her that she would not falter, would not fall; it soothing her worries. It was like the feeling she had experienced at the Manor and more recently during the infiltration of the late Millet's headquarters; an unwavering confidence that she wouldn't let Mireille down-wouldn't let Odette down-and that no one could stand in the way of her honouring her pledge. However, it was more… refined… somehow-stronger, clearer. Not by too much, but enough for the change to be readily noticeable.

Kirika's widened eyes narrowed, their brown depths becoming hardened, determined once more. As the half a dozen bullets neared her at a breakneck velocity, it was as if she could actually pick them out, actually *see* them fly towards her, and in turn infer their upcoming routes through the air. She twisted and turned her lithe body this way and that, neatly skirting each one by at least a full inch, a considerably greater degree than her previous endeavours. Bullets flew under her, bullets flew over her, but not one of them touched her.

And then the darkhaired girl's flight waned, as did her enemy's, both required to end their strafing dives with their airborne duel in an apparent tie. As Kirika's right shoulder hit the floor she popped the depleted clip from her Beretta and pivoted on the joint, manoeuvring her body so that her redirected momentum threw her into a backwards roll. While she spun head over heels she plucked a new magazine from one of the two black ammunition pouches strapped to her left thigh and slotted it into her gun. An instant later Kirika was back on her feet and nestled in the small nook between the left most bookshelf on the right hand wall and the open door of the library's entrance. She then raised her handgun up to her face and calmly pulled back its slide with her free hand, setting a bullet into the weapon's chamber and preparing it for the next duel with Vincent.

In the meantime, Vincent finished his dive in a similar style to Kirika's. When his upper back touched the floor he tucked in his head and legs to his body and rolled backwards, ending up in a crouch behind an armchair near the middle of the room. Fortunately, the line of sight offered to him from his position of cover was not of a sufficient angle to see the diminutive girl, the side face of the bookshelf she was standing behind bestowing her with adequate-if slender-shelter.

The midair dance of death with Vincent had lasted a scarce handful of seconds, but from Kirika's perspective it had felt longer, as if time itself had slowed down, as though it had been stretched out for just those few moments. She wondered if the sensation had something to do with that other feeling she had felt. But despite the lengthened sense of time during the duel Kirika wasn't sure if she had managed to hit Vincent. She didn't believe so, however; for his dozen or more shots at her she had only fired six in retaliation, and she was pretty certain the spry gangster had succeeding in evading them all just like she had his. Their duel had been a draw.

[Do you see now why one must not hesitate during a mission? Every second is precious, and talk is not to be wasted on the dead.]

Yes, Kirika saw what her delay in shooting Vincent had cost her. She had lost the advantage she'd had over him when she and Mireille had burst into the room, and consequently had made it much more difficult for herself to kill him now that he was on his guard and better armed. Yet the delay had been unavoidable. Kirika had behaved as guided by Mireille's actions, deferring to the worldlier assassin's lead and letting her make all of the important decisions, the girl comfortably knowing that her faith in her older and wiser partner was not misplaced. It was the method in which the pair had always operated on, and Kirika was not about to alter it now. She felt more at ease with Mireille showing her the way; it felt… right. Mireille always took the point, Mireille always did the talking, Mireille always made the choices. That was just the way it was, and Kirika was happy with that. Well, perhaps not so much with her love opting to be on point all the time-it was a hazardous position, with the woman being the first to experience any incoming attack-but it was probably for the best anyway since Mireille had to know what was ahead of them in order to make her smart decisions. The taciturn girl didn't feel left out or under appreciated; she was simply more suited to the actual combat aspect of their trade and Mireille was aware of that. Kirika wouldn't know the first thing to say or do if given her partner's role.

The unwarranted thought appropriately dismissed, Kirika refocused her mind on current, genuine troubles such as the two enemy assassins she and Mireille were trying to slay, or rather one in particular. With her back pressed up against its side, the lissom girl risked a peek around the corner of the bookshelf… and almost caught a bullet with her face.

"Come on, brat!" Vincent hollered in what Kirika could tell was a derogatory tone as he fired upon her location with his pair of Beretta Elites, one held in each hand. The petite assassin quickly pulled back her head as hot lead hammered into the old texts arranged on the bookshelf behind her, shredding through leather covers and aged paper both and likely making the tomes unreadable. "Come out and play!" the darkly dressed hitman yelled, pausing in his attack only to shout the taunt before firing over the back of the armchair he was using as cover at Kirika's position once again, slugs sporadically striking the bookshelf and section of wall near the library's doorway every two or three seconds.

Kirika, immune to Vincent's jeers-primarily because she didn't understand why what he was spouting was deemed as insulting or goading-simply ignored them for what they were to her-meaningless ramblings. She passed her gun from her right hand to her left, thankful for her ambidextrousness when using firearms gained from her smart decision to learn the skill after an enlightening but painful experience in Sicily many months ago. Her spot behind the shelf on the right side of the library made employing her pistol in her usual right-handed fashion impossible, unless she strayed from shelter which she was most certainly not about to do without good reason. However, due to her talent of being able to proficiently utilise her gun in her left hand as though it were sported in her right, Kirika merely had to switch grips rather than seek out cover more conducive to her dominant hand.

Kirika, having committed Vincent's general position behind the armchair on the other side of the room to memory from the earlier glances she had stole at him, reached across her slim waist with her left hand and poked the silenced barrel of her Beretta held in it around the corner edge of the shelf, her quick mind calculating the elevation in which to tilt the weapon in order to have the highest chance of hitting her target. Satisfied with her estimation, the girl then fired her pistol three times seemingly blindly at Vincent, but in her mind's eye she saw the scene behind the bookshelf along with the bullets' predicted paths as if she were really peering around it.

Kirika's shots, aimed on educated reasoning alone, were rewarded with a surprised yelp from Vincent and an abrupt cut off to the erratic gunfire from his dual Berettas. The diffident but incredibly skilled assassin envisioned him ducking behind the armchair to take refuge from her trio of rounds, instead of him actually being hit by one. It was a possibility of course, but she knew the likelihood was remote.

With an apparent opening to go on the offensive now imparted to her by way of Vincent being forced to retreat from his former aggressive stance, Kirika whirled around and leaned out from behind the bookshelf, bringing up her gun and setting the armchair in its sight. She noted that the chair had two bullet holes defacing its intricately patterned fabric cushion covers near the top of its wooden frame, indicating that at least a pair of her blind shots had come close to their mark dwelling to the rear of the piece of furniture.

Kirika's foe had obviously anticipated her push for supremacy in their battle, and countered by sticking one of his Elites over the back of the armchair and firing madly yet blindly in her direction, an advanced tactic much like the one the girl had employed against him only seconds before but with a great deal less discipline. Thus, Kirika was compelled to dart back into cover once again to avoid the onslaught, failing to get off a shot of her own… not that there was anything to aim at besides Vincent's blazing handgun. It was a stalemate; both combatants trapped in their respective locales with the lone available option to take turns pinning the other down until one of them ran out of patience or ammo. Kirika was sure she could outlast the gangster in both respects if circumstances had been different, however as it was she was under a strict time frame that was fast worsening as every second passed, and which could end at any moment. The present environment was simply not favourable to a long drawn out fight.

As if to validate her point, Kirika began to detect frantic shouts echoing through the doorway originating from down the hallway outside the library, the other guards of the estate having surely heard the violent disturbance in this part of the house and in their investigation had now stumbled upon their dead comrades littering the corridor. Time was up. While the darkhaired girl believed she and Mireille could beat back any armed force that tried to enter the library-especially this mansion's lightly equipped and seemingly poorly skilled guards-Vincent and Ryosuke were still up on their feet which complicated things, placing the young women between two hostile fronts, one with power in numbers, and the other with noteworthy expertise. However, Vincent and Ryosuke were put in much the same problematic situation as Kirika and Mireille, and they had the additional motivation to escape with Langonel's Manuscript, stealing the book the apparent reason why they had invaded Albert Laroque's home. Kirika assumed that her partner would opt for them to chase after the fake Noir if the men attempted to flee as it was the wisest decision, and she knew her intelligent love was apt to make those.

Kirika, with her back to the bookshelf's side face, bent forwards a bit to check on Mireille on the other half of the room and also warn her of the approaching threat, while being careful not to lean out too far and become a clear target for Vincent who continued to send a frequent spattering of lead her way. She had been hearing thunderous 'boom' sounds throughout her duel with Vincent, and as she cast her eyes to her partner's location, she discovered their source.

Ryosuke sported a big silver revolver in his right hand-of a type Kirika was not familiar with despite her extensive schooling on all kinds of firearms-and was currently occupied with blasting at a sofa with it. The sofa itself had endured thorough abuse, its fluffy innards bulging out through multiple gashes sullying its surface, akin to viscera threatening to spill from ruptured abdomens. And Mireille was pinned behind that eviscerated couch which clearly afforded her with limited if any protection from Ryosuke's gunfire, yet somehow the angelic woman was holding her own anyway. Still, the scene set Kirika's nerves on edge and caused a tension in her chest, the suddenly anxious girl having to restrain herself from immediately leaping to the blonde's aid and recklessly into Vincent's line of sight. Not that she wouldn't have despite the torrent of fire she would have had to dash through, but there was a simpler and less perilous way in which to relieve the pressure from Mireille.

"Guards are coming!" Kirika cried, aware that Ryosuke and Vincent as well as Mireille would hear her warning… and act on it.

As she had hoped, Ryosuke ceased shooting at Mireille and lifted his smoking pistol vertically upright, before his head snapped to the open library doorway, his violet gaze staying unswervingly fixed to it for a few moments. An alarm suddenly went off then, the appropriately timed piercing wails that reverberated around the house granting credence to Kirika's words. It was evidently enough for Ryosuke-he turned sharply to his shorter partner who remained crouched behind the chair, firing merrily away with his Berettas.

"We are leaving!" he informed Vincent in a harsh voice-almost a snarl-prompting the other man to hold his fire and look up at the black-garbed hitman.

"Damn!" Vincent vehemently complained. "Just when it was getting interesting!"

Just then the sound of footsteps reached Kirika's ears, pulling her attention back to the outside hallway. She saw a shadow blow past the crack in between the door and the doorjamb it was hinged to, and impulsively lashed out with a fierce kick using her right foot, striking the open library door in front of her and sending it swinging into a guard's face, the unlucky first to arrive on the scene.

The guard screamed as his unexpected assailant-the door-smashed unforgivingly into his face, the impact strong enough to crush his nose into pulp. Kirika heard him stagger backwards-likely clutching his ruined nose-and then she kicked the door again as it bounced off his face and back towards her, this time causing it to shut tight instead of disfiguring someone on the other side.

Kirika turned quickly away from the door and looked around the corner of the bookshelf, just in time to catch sight of Ryosuke bound off the desk at the end of the room and hurl himself through the huge window to its rear, the man angling his body so that his shoulder and side took the brunt of the collision. Glass shards and pieces of white painted frame fell like confetti in his wake with the whole lower half of the window virtually destroyed, the gaping hole creating a portal into the darkness of the night; a portal that Ryosuke used to vanish into its murky embrace.

Mireille, who had been firing round after round at Ryosuke from her spot on her knees stooped behind the battered couch throughout the hitman's race for freedom, fumed at her seemingly ineffective shots and at his escape, her expression incensed with brow deeply wrinkled and grinding teeth bared.

"Later, brat! It was fun!" Vincent farewelled to Kirika, flashing her a roguish smile over his shoulder before he followed in Ryosuke's footsteps, hopping atop the desk in a single leap and then diving headfirst through the gap in the window made by his partner's departure seconds before.

As Vincent jumped on the desk and dived through the air, Kirika emptied the remainder of her clip at him with controlled, paced pulls of her gun's trigger. She hoped to fatally wound him or at least cripple him before he disappeared from sight so that her and Mireille's imminent pursuit of him would be easier. There was a click of a door opening behind her as she fired, the telltale noise notifying her that the guards were about to try to enter the library again.

Kirika waited for a full second to pass so that the lead sentry had time to cross the threshold of the library's entrance, and then without looking-without even so much as thinking-her leg struck out behind her at a flawless horizontal angle-the slender but well-muscled limb perfectly perpendicular to the floor-and once more kicked the room's door with devastating force into a guard's face, eliciting a pain-wracked howl from him and delaying his and his comrades' entry yet again. The kick was over in a flash, her foot returning to the floor so quickly it was as if it had never left to begin with. And all the while the girl's concentration remained on shooting the fleeing Vincent.

Mireille, seeing that an already busy Kirika was holding Laroque's guards at bay all by herself with only her leg no less, rushed to assist her partner. The woman threw herself along the length of the couch she was behind and landed on her side on the floor, the upper half of her body extending past the sofa's end and thus causing her eyesight and with it her gun sight to be in line with the library's entrance. As the previously booted door rebounded off the front guard's now bloodied features and revealed both him and his companions crowding the darkened corridor beyond, Mireille let loose with a series of shots at the group, her Walther replacing the room's door as a much more deadlier means of preventing the unwanted company from breaching the entryway.

Kirika could make out the screams of the dying to her rear as Mireille covered her back with ruthless precision, and the girl allowed herself to dispense with the possibility of threats coming from behind for the time being, having total faith that her love would keep her safe while her attention was elsewhere. However, her attention was not diverted for long. As the hollow brass coloured casing of Kirika's fourth and final bullet intended for Vincent tumbled to the carpet, the man himself disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the library's broken window, joining Ryosuke in shadow. She wasn't certain if her last ditch effort to shoot him had been successful-he hadn't exhibited any signs of being struck during his escape-but in the hazy, chaotic intensity of close quarters combat it was often hard to gauge a hit without physical indicators such as a cry of shock and pain, or the spreading of blood on clothing, or the most obvious; a sudden lifeless body collapsing to the floor. For all Kirika knew Vincent might have passed into the night as a corpse.

Kirika turned her head to Mireille on the floor as she expelled the empty magazine from the bottom of her Beretta's handle, quickly swapping it with a full one. The blonde looked up at her, after just firing the last round from her own weapon herself, and their eyes locked. Kirika could tell what her partner's wishes were before the woman even voiced them.

"After them!" Mireille shouted, sliding her body across the floor and back behind the cover of the sofa. And not a moment too soon. With now nothing to dissuade their advance or to hold them in check, the guards gathered outside the doorway returned the bombardment the assassin had used to thin out their ranks with treble the force, metallic slugs scouring their ragged trails in the slice of carpet where she had once lain.

Mireille scrambled to her feet and reloaded her pistol whilst on the run, Kirika matching her pace for pace on the other side of the room, the small lounge dividing them on their dash towards their mutual goal-the window and the protection of the dark. Meanwhile sentries poured into the room behind them like a raging flood, the riotous black currents spitting lead froth in their direction. Bullets whistled by Kirika's head and crisscrossed between her pumping legs, the guards' abysmal aim or perhaps their fast moving target responsible for the misses, or maybe a blending of the two. Glancing over to Mireille, she saw that the woman was similarly besieged, and the shorter, slimmer girl worried about her continued wellbeing, that tight feeling in her chest waxing and waning as each round flew past her love, narrowly missing her slim but mature frame. Suddenly Kirika was hardly conscious that she was being shot at too.

"Don't hit the books! Mr. Laroque will be furious!" someone cautioned in a yell above the clamour of innumerable gunshots. Abruptly the thick spray of fire being delivered upon Mireille began to ebb, and Kirika felt her anxiety recede in tandem; the less beleaguered her love was with incoming bullets, the less her chest felt constricted.

As Kirika and Mireille neared the window their paths came together-the young women side by side once more-and each used an armchair at the end of the lounge as a springboard to propel themselves onto the desk in front of the library's window. They leapt in harmony and landed in harmony, their respective right feet touching the top of the desk for the mere fleetest of moments before they dived headlong off it, aiming for the hole in the window. However, during their finishing jump their actions differed, demonstrating Kirika and Mireille's divergent styles as assassins.

As Mireille passed over the windowsill, she twisted around so that she was gliding through the air on her back, her pistol held in the vicinity of her crotch. Clutching it in a grip comprising of both right and left hands, one to hold the weapon and one to steady it, she looked down her body-it near parallel to the library's floor-and along her gun's sight, targeting their pursuers and teaching them with a string of lethally accurate shots that it would be intelligent to let her and Kirika go without a fuss.

In the meantime, after ensuring with a quick look that neither Ryosuke nor Vincent were sneakily lying in wait for her and Mireille on the other side of the window, the more agile Kirika simply let herself tumble into the beginnings of a somersault, but for the notable disparity of omitting to bend her knees at the customary moment to complete the manoeuvre. As a result, she sailed through the window upside down with her back leading her midair trip and her legs stretched out, her supple form in the shape of a topsy-turvy 'L'. Pinpointing her and her partner's foes effortlessly despite viewing the interior of the library the wrong way up, Kirika then levelled her Beretta in her hands-the limbs almost in line with her legs-at the guards and proceeded to mirror Mireille's aggressive act, doing what she had been trained to do for most of her young life-purge the world of sinners. But that was the very least of her motivations, hardly even a motivation at all; defending Mireille was what provoked the girl to pull the trigger of her gun. That sinners died as a consequence of her oath was just a natural happenstance. After all, only those who dwelled in darkness would ever try to do the woman harm.

When the remains of the window frame and the brickwork of the mansion surrounding it entered Kirika's field of view, she tucked in her legs and at last followed through with her somersault, allowing her momentum to push her head up and her heels down. Once her feet hit the ground she automatically dropped into a crouch to absorb the force of the fall from the first storey window as well as the leftovers of her leap's energy, her landing a perfect one that would make any gymnast proud.

Mireille's landing outside the library's window was not as graceful as Kirika's, but was still more or less a smooth one. She flew out the window on her back, continuing to fire at the guards through it until her aim was obscured by the manor's wall as gravity dragged her down. Her back eventually hit the ground, that wide area of her body and the soft grass beneath it together helping to reduce the severity of the impact. She then skidded along it for a second before managing to lift up the lower half of her body and redirect her momentum to thrust her into a reverse roll, which she then stopped once she was upright by digging her feet into the hard soil underneath the estate's lawn.

It took only an instant for Kirika and Mireille to realise that they were on the left flank of Laroque's mansion-the kitchen side entrance about twenty metres away-although it took a little longer to realise just where Ryosuke and Vincent were. Kirika could only see two fuzzy outlines getting smaller and more indistinct with every passing moment moving across the pitch-black compound and heading in the direction of the fence adjacent to the street in front of the estate. The hitmen's dark attire made it hard for her to follow their movements, the girl repeatedly losing and having to find the silhouettes again as they persisted in blending into the gloom, and she imagined that Mireille had the same problem. On top of that the young women had only just came out of a lit room and into total darkness; their eyes hadn't had a chance to adjust to the abrupt change in illumination yet. As a consequence of these impediments they had to endure it would make trying to shoot Ryosuke and Vincent most difficult indeed. But before Kirika and Mireille could even attempt to do so they would first have to lessen the wide gap separating themselves and their enemies first, as the men were out of range of their pistols' stings.

Wasting no time, Kirika and Mireille bolted after the fleeing shadows, heavy gunfire from the guards swarming the smashed window nearby seeing them off. Fortunately, as with Ryosuke and Vincent, the dark worked to their benefit even without wearing black clothing, its shroud camouflaging their movements and effectively protecting them from the deadly hail.

As the assassins closed in on Ryosuke and Vincent and subsequently on the iron wrought fence the gangsters were running towards, Kirika heard shouts from the mansion now behind her and her partner, the animated sounds clear and easily distinguishable above the still ringing alarm that was, incidentally, detectable even from the outside of the building; the muffled shrieks of a violated and outraged creature. She spared a look over her shoulder at their source and witnessed more men dressed in black business suits spilling out of the manor's now brightly lit front entrance and rush into the compound. They carried flashlights as well as their handguns, the tools' bright round beams dancing in the field of black blanketing the estate's grounds as their operators moved. Some guards circled around the house while others spread out across the lawn, obviously searching for the intruders that the alarm still raged about-or in other words, Kirika, Mireille, and their quarry. Mireille had been right; people who had their sleep interrupted late in the night did not wake up happy.

Kirika's gaze was pulled back to the sights ahead of her by the sudden subdued noise of Mireille's Walther P99 discharging in a rapid burst beside her, its muzzle flare as well as its roar contained by the silencer fitted to its end. Looking once again in the direction of the fence, the girl immediately spotted two figures scaling the enclosure, their black swathed forms standing out in stark effect against the light from the streetlamps on its opposite side. Ryosuke and Vincent had reached the fence, but in doing so had exposed themselves for the world to see… and for bullets to find.

Kirika quickly raised her weapon and joined Mireille in assailing the men with gunfire, squeezing off her remaining four shots without hesitation, knowing that the silencer attached to her own pistol would similarly veil its use and hence keep their position a secret from the angry guards' eyes. But the assassins' concealment would not last for long. Rounds from Kirika and Mireille's guns ricocheted off the bars of the fence while Ryosuke and Vincent nimbly climbed up them like human spiders, momentary but bright orange sparks igniting from each missed shot. If the guards hadn't already noticed the men hanging in the middle of the air under the glaring light of the streetlamps, the shrill noise of lead glancing off iron in a mini fireworks display was bound to attract their attention.

Both Kirika and Mireille emptied their pistols' already half depleted magazines in a matter of seconds, and with no real results to show for the expenditure. They hurried to reload, their spent clips landing in the grass as they were cast aside and then left far behind, the young women continuing to run onwards. But the break in the attack was all Ryosuke and Vincent needed. The men finished deftly clambering up the spiked bars of the fence in a matter of moments and then jumped down from their pinnacle to the pavement on the other side of the barrier, before taking off down the street and disappearing behind a high hedge wall of a neighbouring estate, neither bothering to look back the way they had come.

It took a further five seconds to arrive at the fence after Ryosuke and Vincent had left Kirika's sight, time that was the equivalent of as many minutes in a chase. Kirika shoved her Beretta behind the back, held in the waistband of her skirt, and then leapt upon the railing, grabbing two bars far up their lengths so that her feet dangled just above the short brick wall below. With her Walther holstered Mireille leapt with her, although she didn't match the height of her partner's jump, instead clinging to a section of fence that was lower than the lithe girl's and utilising the top of the wall as a foothold. The duo then scrambled up the enclosure, the calls of Laroque's men catching sight of them speeding their ascent.

The nimbler Kirika reached the top of the fence first and without waiting for Mireille dropped down to the footpath, drawing her gun from the small of her back as she fell. She landed lightly on her feet facing in the direction Ryosuke and Vincent had fled, her fully loaded pistol at the ready. The darkhaired girl was glad that she was taking the point for once rather than her love. Wading into danger before the woman was something she ought to be doing, and in this scenario the danger was quite great. A common tactic for those being pursued was to set an ambush for their pursuers whenever they escaped their line of sight, and this situation-just like when Ryosuke and Vincent had jumped through the library's window-was an ideal time to put the strategy into practice. Kirika had to trigger any possible trap before Mireille joined her; that way she alone would suffer the brunt of it and as a result the blonde would be alerted to the peril ahead and counter for it as necessary, hence having a good chance of evading injury. With that goal in mind, Kirika ran down the street instantly after her feet hit the ground, hoping to tempt Ryosuke and Vincent into springing any surprise attack they might have planned for her and her love.

But there was no attack, for there was no Ryosuke and Vincent. Kirika slowed her run to a jog, then a walk, and then stopped outright on the footpath, panting softly while her eyes roved about her surroundings, searching for any sign of her and Mireille's enemies. However, all that the girl saw were deserted streets and silent buildings, merely the night itself. It was as though Ryosuke and Vincent had become part of that night, melting into its pall and being spirited away to places unknown. Or perhaps the night had simply reclaimed them, the darkness enveloping them, welcoming its kind home with an embrace. But either way, they were gone; the night would not give them up.

Mireille hopped down from the fence a mere couple of seconds after Kirika, choosing to make her drop to the pavement from considerably closer to it rather than from a ten-foot high plunge as her partner had done. She then ran over to the girl, her pace gradually decreasing until she came to a gentle halt beside her partner, her pistol lowering slowly to her side. Mireille was panting too from their recent physical exertions of sprinting and climbing, although her breaths came a bit heavier than Kirika's, the blonde clearly the more winded of the two.

Kirika was expecting an admonishment from Mireille for leaving her behind at the fence, but the woman didn't say a word as she stood beside her. Moments past, and then Kirika heard Mireille panting die down before she released one long, slow breath; a stream of cloudy air billowing out of her slightly parted lips past the girl's left cheek and rising towards the black sky before vanishing. She turned her head to look at Mireille and saw that she was staring at the empty and quiet streets in front of them, her expression gravely serious with her brow knitted and the muscles around her eyes tight, as though she were in deep thought. But Kirika knew her love wasn't really seeing the streets; the glaze to her blue eyes and stern set of her countenance told the girl that she was contemplating where to go from here now that Ryosuke and Vincent had escaped… with Langonel's Manuscript.

Kirika looked away from Mireille and back to the silent streets, starting to gaze at their tarmac roads vacantly herself. Langonel's Manuscript-the virtual bible of Soldats where the underlying dark principles of Noir's being was inscribed. She didn't know how, but she knew that the copy Ryosuke and Vincent had just succeeded in stealing was the one that she had read from at the Manor. No, she hadn't read for it. It had been that *other* girl-that *other* girl had flipped through its pages, that *other* girl had recited its passages. Kirika's *other* self had been the one under Altena's deceptively benevolent eye that night, not her.

Kirika shivered at the surfacing of memories that weren't hers, suddenly feeling the cold weather for the first time tonight. But then the chill suffusing her body slowly diminished, the girl feeling steadily warmer down her back and around her neck and upper chest. She smiled softly and looked at Mireille once more, suspecting that she was the culprit and was hugging her from behind in an unexpected gesture of fondness. However, once her gaze fell on her love she realised that Mireille hadn't moved a muscle since the last instance she had looked the blonde's way. Kirika's smile abruptly evaporated, the gentle curve supplanted by an impassive flat line while disappoint that her idyllic initial belief was proved false developed within her. But that sentiment was soon eclipsed as she began to feel a little disconcerted by the mysterious warmth, its heat almost akin to… to a presence.

But the warmth faded as quickly as it had manifested, and Kirika was left wondering whether it had even been there at all; if it had just been a figment of her imagination. Yet the cold did not seek to replace it, and she did not feel the bite of the freezing night air again. But another feeling did arise in the warmth's wake, a different one from the first, but one that served to rekindle her disconcert nevertheless. It was a feeling of having been… marked somehow. No… that she always had been marked, and was only now remembering. A sense of foreboding gripped Kirika, and although she wasn't certain of its precise origin it sent shudders through her soul, as if that essence knew something the girl it inhabited did not.

The alarm ringing in Laroque's mansion and the shouts of his armed men behind them urged the pair to make haste and move on, to flee into cover; into safety. Yet Kirika and Mireille did not budge from their spot on the footpath. They simply stood there, each staring into the night and beyond; past its swirling frozen winds, past its black streaking shadows, past its quiet empty atmosphere; and at things only they could see on the very brink of its horizon. At dark things that had come and gone. And at dark things yet to come.

* * *

In a flicker of shiny ebony Ryosuke darted into an alleyway swallowed by the darkness of the night a few blocks from Albert Laroque's residence, Vin tagging along after him with nearly equal alacrity. The two remained just inside the passageway's entrance, where the prying light from nearby streetlamps did not touch them yet would brand any outsider who ventured close to their position, their telltale shadows sketched on the ground before the assassins' feet. Ryosuke didn't believe their pursuers were still following them however, but one could never be too sure. And those particular young women… they seemed like the tenacious type.

Vin leaned up against a wall of the alley opposite to where Ryosuke stood, his breathing brisk but not hard. Ryosuke knew that the triad member was used to running long distances at an all but constant sprint, with his life potentially depending on his speed-he'd had plenty of practice back in Hong Kong. Vin had related to his Ryosuke many stories of his younger years spent in his birth city over the duration of their association, although the times when he did speak of those gruelling days came few and far between; often only when he was very drowsy or heavily inebriated was his tongue loosened.

Vin, for all his braggart ways was reluctant to reminisce on his life in Hong Kong, but it was to be expected; his old roots were tough, merciless ones indeed, even more so than usual for someone of his disreputable way of life. Tales of when mobs of gangsters armed with all manner of hand-to-hand weapons from crude clubs to wicked machetes and with numbers totalling in the dozens had chased him and his comrades through packed public streets were the norm, the mass assault the equivalent of an assassination attempt in his triad circles. Ryosuke was not unfamiliar with such brazen but brutally effective tactics, but they were less common in the streets of Japan and usually localised to uncivilised gangs of hoodlums with no affiliation to a prestigious yakuza clan of old. In those treacherous situations the only recourse was to flee on foot and find faster transport or a good hiding spot as fast as possible, or else wind up being bludgeoned and stabbed to death in the middle of the road in front of crowds of bystanders. The bonds of brotherhood normally joining men together with ties as strong as those formed with blood were regrettably made thin here, too; any companions who fell behind were left for the pack's bloodlust, lest you be swallowed by the howling horde that swarmed those unfortunates as well. To stay and fight was certainly to die, and attempted rescue of the fallen was suicidal. Sheer numbers saw to that regardless of how skilled one was in combat. As a result, prominent up-and-coming criminals learned to run quick and build up their stamina very early during their careers, with those who didn't more often than not having their rise in their syndicate's ranks cut violently short.

Ryosuke was aware that his partner had scars from his experience in the triads of Hong Kong, physical ones-although none that would detract from his 'beauty'-as well as those of the mental kind. But everybody had scars in one form or another, and they were not an exclusive woe to those individuals who lived their lives in the underworld. Vin was entitled to no pity, just like nobody else was-they were all suffering equally. But unlike those others he had the sense not to ask for it, choosing instead to bear his scars in silence. An admirable trait.

Ryosuke simply stood calmly while Vin quietly huffed and puffed, the ex-yakuza appearing as though he hadn't dashed more than a hundred metres with at least twenty-five kilograms of steel weighing down his body just a second ago. Like his companion, Ryosuke was accustomed to running hard for long distances, but with the exception of being heavily armoured at the time. Not a drop of sweat dampened his brow nor did his chest rise and fall rapidly-he was perfectly composed, perfectly still, his body reminiscent of a statue. Reminiscent of steel.

Ryosuke had deliberately conditioned his body to tolerate all sorts of abuse, seeking to hone his weak flesh to match the strength of the steel that he wrapped it in. For steel was resilient, virtually unbreakable. But flesh was frail and easily damaged. To be invulnerable to all things he had to *become* like steel, and then the swords and arrows of the world would be unable to harm him. However, Ryosuke had yet to achieve his ambition. Tonight he had been shot countless times, and although his coat had protected him, he still hurt. He did not acknowledge the pain, of course-he had at least ascended well beyond that pathetic human need-but his body insisted on crying out to him in spite of his disregard nonetheless. Thus for now the white-haired man was required to don his fortified overcoat-his scales as they had once been called by others in the past-the black garment a substitute for flesh as steel, if an inferior one. But one day he would *truly* embody his old name, a name given to him and one another during his yakuza days-'Kuroi Koutetsu no Ryuu'. Except by then he supposed there would be no need for 'kuroi'.

Ryosuke's forehead creased suddenly as he looked at Vin, his violet eyes that were more in their element in the shadows picking up a dark splotch-darker than the triad member's black coloured shirt-staining the shorter man's right side. "You're hit," he stated simply in an emotionless voice.

"Huh?" Vin said, favouring Ryosuke with a startled look, before following his partner's gaze, dropping his head downwards. "That little brat," he then said as he caught sight of the spreading blood on his shirt, astonishment reigning in his tone rather than anger. He prodded at the wound gingerly, not to see how serious it was, but more like to see if it was really there. "I can't believe it; she actually got me. I didn't even feel it."

Ryosuke made no comment, merely staring at Vin's injury in contemplation. His brow furrowed a little deeper. Noir. His suspicions about Dominique having had them adopt the alias had been confirmed with the pair of 'ancient' assassins showing up in Laroque's library, intent on slaying them. The conniving bitch had planned to use Noir to kill them by provoking the young women's ire with the alleged theft of their name. Ryosuke wondered if the infernal book he and his associate had at last found and acquired for Kaede-or more to be more precise, for Dominique-was even worth anything, or if it had simply been an excuse for them to be sent to Paris, the seeming home city of Noir. But that blonde woman of Noir had wanted it for some reason. Perhaps it was only valuable to her and her Japanese colleague…?

Ryosuke scowled. It would be just like Dominique to think ahead like that, arranging it so that Noir would be ever snapping at his and Vin's heels no matter if the primary objective of her plan was accomplished or not. If Langonel's Manuscript really was important to Europe's greatest contract killers, then they would likely hound Ryosuke and Vin until they retrieved it. And until they killed the two men for taking it in the first place. A very clever piece of foresight indeed, if it were true. But unless Noir was willing to pursue Ryosuke and his partner outside France, then Dominique's possible plan would be for naught; the ex-yakuza aimed to be out of the country by dawn. His sister's trial was a mere couple of days away now because of his and Vin's maddening overseas book-hunting errand. Ryosuke *definitely* had to have Yokohama's soil beneath his boots before then.

Studying Vin's wound as the man continued to spew forth his incredulity at being shot by the 'brat', Ryosuke debated whether Dominique's plotting was actually going to succeed in bringing about the death of at least one of them. It would be… troublesome to have to abandon Vin in Paris if he was too severely injured to travel immediately; finding a new partner with comparative skill to his in Yokohama would be a tiresome ordeal. The bonds of brotherhood were between men were strong, but the bond between Ryosuke and his little sister were stronger. Much stronger. Kaede *always* came first.

"It's not so bad," Vin eventually declared as if sensing the concerns cropping up in Ryosuke's mind. He gave his wound one last experimental poke and raised his head to look at his companion. "I think she just winged me." He then buttoned his suit jacket, concealing the bloodstain, and stared into Ryosuke's piercing violet eyes with his own amber orbs, their depths just as intense. "I can make it," he assured the snow white-haired gangster firmly, knowing that his partner wanted to return to Japan post haste.

Ryosuke simply inclined his head in acceptance. He decided that if Vin's condition worsened before they reached the airport he would leave him behind. It would be difficult to explain a corpse sitting next to him on a plane if the man were to die in transit, after all, and there was no escape when one was thousands of feet in the air. If Vin happened to succumb in the street or even in the airport itself, however, Ryosuke was confident he could slip away and in turn mask any connection linking him to the dead body.

Vin gave Ryosuke a weak lopsided smile. "Good. Then why don't we go pick up our bags?" he suggested. The armoured assassin thought he detected a hint of relief in his voice.

As Ryosuke and Vin walked hurriedly down the streets of Paris, the taller man couldn't help thinking about their recent adversaries. Noir… they certainly were an intriguing pair of individuals. He wondered about their identities, about their lives here in Paris. He wondered how a Japanese girl had met a seeming native-born Frenchwoman, and how the girl had become so talented in the craft of the killer. He wondered how they had 'earned' the designation of Noir, a legendary duo of assassins in this continent. But mainly he wondered if he had seen the last of them.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Ryosuke's bulletproof coat was partially inspired by that Russian woman's coat in the Gun Smith Cats OAV.

For a couple of visual aids for Ryosuke's big gun, think about Vash's gun from Trigun, except larger. Or Barry's Magnum from the Resident Evil remake on the Nintendo Game Cube.

As for what Ryosuke's old name translates to… I'm pretty sure you can all work that out yourselves. ^_^

Oh, and may I say how I hate describing furniture and architecture.


	15. Homeward Bound

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The fifteenth chapter.

**Dedicated to Heta, my arguably biggest fan in Finland. Happy belated Birthday wishes to you! ^_^

**Lightly tinkered with. Note the change of title. I felt it more appropriate.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 15 - Homeward Bound

A small furrow surfaced upon Kirika's forehead and her eyebrows drew together, doing their best to unite at the vertical crease and form a frown. Kirika was asleep beside Mireille, the two nestled snug together in their bed, the younger girl having unconsciously cuddled closer to her beloved partner at some stage during the night. Ordinarily the cosy and comforting presence of Mireille pressed against her would keep Kirika in a deep and peaceful slumber throughout the twilight hours and onwards, right until the morning's sun had risen well above the horizon. But not this time. This time it was far from peaceful and unwelcomely deep. This time Kirika was dreaming. And an unsettling dream it was.

Kirika's shuttered eyes shifted uneasily below her knitted brow, the orbs rolling fitfully beneath their closed lids and visibly disturbing the normally sleep-calmed coverings. Her lips parted and a soft, barely audible gasp of air escaped from between them; a gasp of quiet shock, one that could be easily mistaken for a simple exhalation whist sound asleep. Yet for a reticent girl like Kirika, whose introversion extended even to her unconscious periods, it was the equivalent of a distressed exclamation.

Kirika's eyes suddenly opened unbidden, perhaps the trauma besieging her mind provoking it to at last flee from the unpleasantness of the dream world into the safety of the waking one. Her mind's likely hopes were realised as the morning sunshine pervading the apartment from its uncurtained windows struck the girl's now equally unshuttered reddish-brown eyes, the mellow, soothing rays penetrating their depths and onwards to chase the images of the dream away and back to whatever dark place they had emerged from. But all memory of just what those images had contained were banished also, leaving behind only residual tatters of the dream and a vague impression of the once strong feelings it had induced. In effect, it was almost as if Kirika had never dreamt at all in her time of slumber. Consequently, she could not recall what the dream had been about, why it had upset her so, or even how long it had lasted. All that survived upon her awakening was a hazy recollection of her walking somewhere-somewhere she had recognised, maybe even had been before-along with the aforementioned vestiges of the emotions that had accompanied the dream. Vestiges that imbued a sense of anxiety in Kirika; anxiety… and fear. That the dream had instilled fear-a sentiment seldom experienced by Kirika except during the worst of circumstances, circumstances typically related to Mireille in some way-in itself was enough to worry the teenage assassin, her mind being in the waking world no damper to the full weight and meaning behind that ominous emotion.

But a dream was still a dream. Kirika knew that all too well, her dream of a tomorrow where she and Mireille lived free from violence and death still as elusive as ever. Dreams were fantasies of her mind's making. They had no basis in the waking world, no foundation in reality. Kirika's worries were groundless. Yet she couldn't deny that her feelings were as real as any others she had experienced, and as a result they were not so easy to simply dismiss.

As Kirika slowly blinked her troubled eyes into complete focus, she was greeted with the glorious sight of Mireille's breathtaking profile engulfing her vision, rising like some sort of divine mountain from the ruffled slopes of the pillow, the graceful tapering curve of the woman's nose its crest. Mireille was still fast asleep, her delicate features relaxed, at peace, and her breathing expressed in a gentle, quiet rhythm. It was a beautiful scene to Kirika's eyes; a sight to greet the morning with that could not be matched by anything else in this world. But then of course Mireille was the epitome of beauty; regardless of her physical state she would still be the most wonderful thing in imagination and beyond to her younger partner. Waking up to Mireille's lovely face almost made Kirika totally forget about her dream and the fear it had conveyed, its persisting ghost teetering on joining the rest of its body in the shadows of the girl's mind. But, alas even that heavenly vision turned out not to be enough to grant oblivion and quell the unpleasant feeling of dread nesting in Kirika's heart.

While the final memory of wakefulness Kirika could hark back to from last night consisted of her lying flat on her back at least a hand's breadth away from Mireille, it was not surprising for her to find that her position in bed had drastically altered for the better. That she was now lying on her side squashed up against Mireille on the opposite half of the bed; her cheek resting on the slope of the woman's upper chest, an arm draped across her slender waist and a leg mingling amid her longer ones, the combination effectively restraining the blonde to the mattress; was about as natural to Kirika as the act of waking up in the morning itself. It was a customary arrangement for the girl to wake up in; latched on to the person who meant the most to her in her life. It was as if her unconscious self was somehow drawn to Mireille during the night, her body automatically seeking the gorgeous woman out, her instinctive urges to be close to the one she loved bestowed supremacy over everything else that floated in her mind while slumbering.

Mireille never complained about the nocturnal invasion of her personal space… or she didn't anymore at least. In the early days of her and Kirika's relationship she had conveyed irritation at the quiet girl's clinginess, but those days were fortunately long gone, replaced by a heightened degree of tolerance on the blonde's part. Now Mireille had seemingly become accustomed to Kirika's habit to the point that she graciously indulged it without a hint of displeasure, not so much as even mentioning it regardless of just how intimately her partner's limbs were arranged around her body. And if her occasional surreptitious touches in the morning when she thought Kirika asleep were anything to go by, the diffident girl suspected that Mireille had grown to like their closeness possibly as much as she herself did.

Kirika simply lay where she was, not moving a single muscle, just basking in the joy of tightly embracing the woman who owned her heart. Her eyes stayed where they were upon the picturesque portrait of Mireille's serene face, taking in and adoring its fine details; the smooth, baby-soft alabaster skin; the faint shadows cast by her long eyelashes, helping to define her high cheekbones; the perfect shape of her full, slightly parted lips; the way her sandy tresses, a colour akin to the shores of an unsullied tropical beach, fell about her shoulders and spread out on the pillow under her head. They were sights that Kirika could behold forever and still cherish as if seeing them for the first time. She felt unworthy being in Mireille's presence, a lesser existence-a speck far beneath her. Once again she marvelled at how such a person could deem her deserving of affection, and how blessed she was to be the woman's chosen companion. Kirika again pledged that she would dedicate her life to protecting this wingless angel in her arms. It was the sole reason she lived, her motivation for each of her breaths. Never before had she possessed such strong, sure purpose in her life. Her prior calling as Noir was no equal to it.

As Kirika drank in Mireille's enchanting features, she noticed that not every facet of the woman's visage was as flawless as usual. The scars from the elder assassin's near fatal encounter with the contents of a shotgun shell had faded some yet were still plain to see marring her left cheek, a trio of parallel lines paler than her normal complexion. Looking at them made Kirika feel queasy, and she had to resist the impulse to trace her fingers along the damaged tissue, although why she had such a desire to begin with she couldn't say.

But those old wounds weren't all that spoiled the otherwise heavenly vision of Mireille's peaceful face. Kirika could detect the shade of darkened flesh under the woman's closed eyes, and a general puffiness around the area. They mutually spoke of fatigue, and were a testament to the pair of assassins' skirmishes across Paris last night that had only ceased a few hours before dawn.

Kirika on the other hand felt quite well rested despite yesterday's lengthy outing, bad dreams notwithstanding. However, her physical endurance had been groomed to be virtually inexhaustible in accordance to her creation as the perfect killer, the superior fortitude enabling her to go for days without sleep yet still function at one hundred percent. Such a level of stamina was ideal for long missions where even a short respite was not an option, for instance holding a sniper position whilst patiently waiting for an assassination target to pass before the crosshair of her rock-steady rifle's scope.

But apparently Mireille didn't share her partner's vaulted energy levels. Kirika felt instant sympathy for her, and was more than happy to let the worn-out blonde sleep. It also gave the girl more time to simply gaze at the enthralling person she loved in silent appreciation, an opportunity she was not wont to squander, especially not after being deprived of one for so long. It had once been a scarcity for Kirika to witness Mireille in this tranquil state, stripped of her masks and reserve until only the benevolent woman herself beneath those misleading layers was laid bare in all her splendour. The gunshot wound Kirika had sustained at the Manor had thrown off the darkhaired girl's normal sleeping patterns while her lissom body struggled to recover from the life threatening trauma, meaning that more often than not she had woken up to an empty bed, her partner having awakened and started the day a good deal before her. It was true though that her injury had been virtually healed now for the past week and her derailed sleeping patterns restored as a consequence as well, but Kirika still relished the privilege of seeing Mireille in this naked condition regardless of how many times that privilege came about.

However, this particular opportunity turned out to not last as long as Kirika had envisioned, broken moments later by Mireille's dark-smudged eyelids creeping groggily open to expose a sliver of dazzling blue irises to the morning light; glittering clear skies peeking out from between black clouds. Disorientation swam within the blonde's half-lidded and bleary eyes for a second, but then they dropped lethargically downwards to where Kirika's head rested atop her chest, locking with the girl's own which stared spellbound up at her.

"Good morning," Mireille said with a warm, gentle smile, although her obvious tiredness laced her greeting and dulled her melodious voice's usual lustre.

"Morning," Kirika responded softly in her customary subdued pitch, made more so by her disappointment that the blonde's slumber had concluded so soon. Disappointment not roused because it robbed her of her continued delight at gazing upon a sleeping Mireille-that was in fact the farthest thing from her mind-but because it meant her partner had not received all the rest she so clearly yet needed.

Mireille fidgeted for an instant underneath Kirika's willowy body that partially covered her own more developed one, her muscles briefly tensing to rigid, momentarily hard and unyielding against the girl's enveloping limbs. She then relaxed, but next made to get up and leave the bed, leave Kirika's embrace, her body pressing insistently in opposition to her young colleague's imposed binds of flesh and bone. As was common, Mireille didn't verbally acknowledge Kirika's confining hug or express her want to abandon it, however her wish to do so was unmistakable. And as was common, Kirika didn't want her to go.

But this time Kirika found her limbs that lay across Mireille suddenly stiffening, securing the woman's torso and left leg inescapably where they were, her small body becoming taut as densely packed muscles flexed like coiled steel. Mireille had no choice but to halt her rise from the bed, her eyes opening a little wider in spite of her weariness at the abrupt and unexpected impediment keeping her a captive beneath the sheets.

Mireille frowned faintly and searched her partner's gaze probably for some clue towards the girl's action, but after apparently finding a suitable one, allowed her body to relax once more and settle back upon the mattress. She smiled, a tolerant smile a considerable margin more affectionate than her previous, the fond gesture reaching her dark-ringed eyes.

"I suppose I can stay in bed a little longer," the blonde remarked kindly though somewhat wryly as well, one corner of her mouth curling upwards to turn her tender smile into a tender smirk.

Kirika smiled too, a small smile of gratitude mitigated by the anxiety that still dwelled within her, an unwanted parting gift from the dream. She let her muscles slacken since it was clear Mireille was not going to abandon her, not going to leave her by herself, but the knowledge rather surprisingly did little to alleviate her feelings of apprehension. Furthermore, the fact that it didn't only served to rekindle the impression of fear inside her heart to its former strength, whatever amount that had been diminished thanks to her losing herself in the admiration of Mireille's sleeping face wiped clean. If the continued presence of Mireille in bed with her-while they were both awake *and* cuddled close together, a rare happenstance-could not pacify her unease, then the fear must stem from something in the dream that had been terrible indeed.

Mireille held Kirika's gaze for a second more before she sighed exaggeratedly towards the ceiling, her eyes rolling upwards to the head of the bed. "I guess I'm just your teddy bear, hmm?" she said in a resigned voice, still smirking, and obviously teasing-Kirika had seen teddy bears and Mireille was nothing like them.

The woman's eyes returned from their ascent, meeting Kirika's once again. "Or perhaps you see me as your life-sized doll?" Mireille sighed again, despondently, and an inquisitive blonde eyebrow crawled high on her forehead. "And here I thought you were *my* doll…."

Kirika wasn't exactly certain whether her partner was still teasing or not; Mireille's skin was similar in hue and texture to many of the delicate porcelain dolls' that she had examined once during one of their numerous shopping trips together. Several of the dolls had the same fair hair colour, too. All Mireille required was her blonde locks to be in ringlets and to be devolved into a miniature toddler for her to mimic their general appearance. And also maybe a tiny white dress with frills and lace to fit her new stature.

Despite that Mireille had noticeably woken up in a good mood even with her persevering fatigue, Kirika couldn't manage more than a non-committal mumble at the woman's light-hearted comments, even the last one; her profound worry blanketing her spirits. Nevertheless, a more resilient part of her did muse if it was customary for dolls to receive a lot of clothes as presents that they were expected to wear at least once, recalling Mireille's fancy for buying her scores of garments and compelling her to don most of them no less than one time-if not more-before they could depart the store they were purchased from. Kirika empathised with the dolls; they had a difficult and tiring job. Changing repeatedly in and out of clothes and then contorting yourself in varying stances took its toll on your stamina, even Kirika's having trouble enduring. The girl wondered if Altena had incorporated a comparable training program to help build her staying power to what it was today, her patchy memory providing no clear details if the woman had or not. If Altena had, she was sure that it had not been as enjoyable as participating in the activity under Mireille's supervision. Her compliance to seemingly act as a doll invoked happiness in Mireille, and if her partner was happy, then Kirika was, too. No matter how demanding it was to generate that happiness.

Kirika's smile slipped, the introverted assassin's characteristic sombre expression returning to the fore with its collapse. Her restless eyes fell away from her partner's happy ones made slightly arched by Mireille's playful yet compassionate smirk, and focused instead on the bow below the collar of the woman's lilac pyjama top. Kirika's vision blurred, however, not really seeing the tied ribbon except for a white splodge in a plain of lilac. For some reason thinking about Altena caused the already substantial fear chilling her heart to turn all the more icy, a fresh shot of frost injected along the frozen network of tendrils deeply rooted inside it. Kirika shivered as the cold permeated outwards from her chest to the rest of her body, as if her heart was pumping the chill through her very veins in concert with her blood.

"Are you alright?" Mireille asked, concern now ruling her voice. Kirika's tremble had been practically indiscernible to the naked eye, the barest ripple passing through her body from her slim shoulders to her dainty feet, but to Mireille it had apparently been plain to see. And to feel. Kirika was all but lounging on the woman's chest; she should have realised that it would've been unlikely for her partner not to pick up on it.

Feeling guilty to have harmed Mireille's fine morning spirits, Kirika contemplated merely murmuring wordlessly in the affirmative and hopefully avert any further demolishment of them. But as her mouth opened to utter that insincere sound, she thought of her time spent with Mireille at the bar in that colourfully lit neighbourhood of Paris yesterday, specifically at what the blonde had spoken to her about. Kirika had been honest when she had stated that she knew she could talk to Mireille about anything; it was just that she frequently found it a struggle to put her thoughts and feelings into the proper words, or words that she was sure her partner would understand, at any rate. Or else, as in this particular case, she sometimes believed it better not to mention anything at all for the greater good. And then of course there was the fact that Kirika was on the whole really not the talkative sort, preferring to listen rather than contribute to a conversation, even if its participants were solely she and Mireille.

Since Mireille had judged it necessary to seek verification that Kirika recognised she was there to talk to, the stoic assassin wanted to try to be more open with those thoughts that cropped up in her mind and those emotions that swelled or shrivelled her heart, and thus reassure the woman she loved that she did indeed know she could come to her for anything. Kirika didn't want Mireille to think she wasn't needed or that she was unapproachable. Certainly, the blonde could be standoffish on occasion, especially to other people, but for Kirika that aloofness was always significantly if not wholly toned down… although admittedly it was to some extent relative to Mireille's state of mind at the time.

Kirika tilted her head upwards a bit on Mireille's chest, her unnerved reddish-brown eyes welcomed back by her partner's tired ones, their depths more troubled than she last remembered. "I… had a dream," the girl said with some difficultly, her throat inexplicitly drying out, as if she had been abruptly stricken by a severe thirst. She swallowed, attempting to dispel the disagreeable sensation.

"A dream?" Mireille repeated, her brow creasing a tad as she considered this. "Was it a good dream?" Her lips twitched, and Kirika could tell she was trying hard not to smile. "About me, perhaps?"

"Mm," Kirika mumbled, dismissing the blonde's speculation as incorrect. She would have loved for her dream to be about Mireille instead of… whatever it had really been about. Kirika's dreams about Mireille ordinarily made her feel nice inside, even if she couldn't remember their details in the morning. The few that didn't were connected to the past, or involved Mireille leaving her all alone or the woman being hurt in some horrible manner. The mornings following those particular dreams Kirika tended to cling to her partner in bed just a little tighter than normal. "I can't remember what it was about," the disturbed girl revealed quietly, "but I know it was bad."

Mireille stared at Kirika for a moment, as if mulling over something, and then there was a rustle of bedcovers before the latter young woman felt the blonde's fingers lightly caress the nape of her neck, a ticklish yet tantalising sensation that sent a shiver of a different kind to her last one through her lithe body. Mireille smiled, a comforting, reassuring smile that's mere sight calmed Kirika's fretting heart a large fraction. "Try not to worry about it," Mireille said, her fingers an idle but gentle, massaging pressure on the back of Kirika's neck. "Dreams are a window into your mind. If you've been thinking a lot about something before you go to sleep, then chances are you'll dream about it. A favourite activity, the day's events, worries; whatever was on your mind before you fell asleep."

Mireille exhaled softly and looked up at the ceiling while her fingers travelled higher behind Kirika's neck, reaching her tousled dark locks. She began to toy with them, entwining tufts around her graceful fingers over and over again, in a way that was very similar to when she played with the girl's hair while she believed her to be napping. "After leaving it with my uncle, as a little girl I used to dream a lot about my home in Corsica," the blonde recounted, her blue eyes taking on the tint of a distant sky. "I used to miss it a great deal, you see. It was never far from my thoughts." She blinked suddenly, and looked down at Kirika. "But that's not the case anymore," the blonde quickly clarified with a bright smile, perhaps recognising that the reason behind her exodus of Corsica might still be a touchy subject for her partner. She would be right. "I see this place as my home now." Mireille appeared as though she were going to say more, her mouth remaining open for longer than required, but instead she closed it and then simply smiled at Kirika once more.

"We've had some substantial worries lately," the woman went on in a more serious tone a few seconds later as she looked to the ceiling again, although she didn't cease fiddling with Kirika's hair, "so it's little wonder that you had an unpleasant dream."

"Mm…" Kirika gravely agreed, her gaze dropping to regard the bow on Mireille's pyjamas again. There was no mention of the most recent source of those worries however, no mention of last night's proceedings and the implications behind them. But the topic hung heavily in the air between the two assassins, unacknowledged yet still present, like a bloated black cloud waiting to burst and spread its wretched rain over an otherwise sunny day. Neither wanted to broach it, knowing that all it would do was cause the atmosphere to irrevocably turn sour. The rain could fall later, when it had to. Not now, in this period of fleeting peace.

Mireille became silent, seemingly content to carry on absently stroking her fingers through her younger partner's mop of hair. Kirika was silent too, digesting the worldly woman's remarks. One thing Mireille had neglected to point out is that dreams could be a premonition of the future. Kirika had once dreamt that another her existed inside of herself, a dream which had been in part responsible for prompting her to write a letter to Mireille in case that dark self ever fully roused and had to be slain. It had been a dream that had come true. But she hoped that Mireille was right; that her earlier dream was just a manifestation of some unconscious worry. It could have been that her premonition hadn't been a dream to begin with, but rather a lost memory resurfaced in the night, after all.

Minutes ticked by in hushed serenity, and Kirika found the strong, even thump of Mireille's heart beneath her right ear a lulling rhythm in the quiet, its drumbeat serving to scare off the origin of her fear, exiling it. Meanwhile the reassuring warmth of the beautiful blonde's body radiated into the slender girl's own, defrosting the lingering traces of cold dread in her veins until they melted away, gone as if they never were. And finally Mireille's affectionately dancing fingers mended Kirika's frayed nerves, smoothing the roughness that had formed until none remained; a steadfast will revitalised to its usual staunchness.

A small, lazy smile came to Kirika's face, her eyelids feeling heavy and her breathing rate slowing. She felt a lot better. She should have known that talking to Mireille would have been more than enough to alleviate her distress. Just being with the woman she loved would have sufficed. It always did.

"I hope my hair doesn't smell too acrid," Mireille said softly, almost in a whisper. "I'm not sure I got all the alcohol out."

"Mm…" Kirika mumbled dreamily in the negative, no more than vaguely aware of the bundle of blonde silk strands lying near to her nose. "It smells nice…."

It eventually dawned on Kirika that her eyelids were shut and had been for several minutes. She was dozing off, balanced on the boundary of sleep and awake. She wasn't afraid to give in to the desire either; positive that Mireille's continued presence by her side would chase away any bad dreams that dared threaten to attack her mind and taint her slumber. It seemed that her extensive training in combating drowsiness counted for naught when set against the chance to snooze on Mireille's chest. Kirika briefly pondered why Altena apparently hadn't taught her to resist this type of lure. But perhaps it could not be resisted-the girl frankly believed it was beyond human effort to even come close.

"I think it would be best for us to get up now, before a certain someone nods off," Mireille's caring yet amused voice suddenly suggested, lyrical eloquence filtering through the fluff shrouding Kirika's head. "Honestly; I thought you were no longer a sleepy head!"

Kirika's eyes opened slothfully while she moaned in confusion, blinking with matching sluggishness up at Mireille's smiling face. The blonde just shook her head wryly at her partner's sleepiness, and then following a split second's hesitation, she fondly patted the girl twice in succession on her darkhaired head. "Come on," she lightly urged, "we can't stay in bed all day."

Mireille's gaze was then yet again cast to the white-painted ceiling above, accompanied by an exhausted sigh emitted from her throat. Kirika noted that the woman's dusky-rimmed eyes were tearing up with fresh moisture through her own now almost likewise watery orbs. Fresh pity similarly flooded the girl's heart, a different kind of anxiousness from the one so recently purged from it, nonetheless only marginally more tolerable. "But the way I'm feeling right now, I certainly wouldn't mind to," the blonde assassin added wearily, candidly admitting and not to mention exhibiting the strain she was undergoing. It was a seldom seen thing; Kirika could count the number of related incidents on the fingers of one hand. Mireille tended to be unforthcoming in relation to what could be perceived as weakness of any sort afflicting her. Kirika could understand that if in the presence of strangers or enemies, but not so much when it was just the two of them. She supposed however that her partner merely didn't want her to worry-it was a practice Mireille often engaged in.

But the thing was, as odd as it sounded, Kirika *wanted* to worry. She-like Mireille in respect to her, the girl realised in surprise-wanted to know if anything was troubling the woman, upsetting her, or if she was in pain of some kind. And Kirika wanted to help resolve those troubles, allay those upsets, and ease those pains. It was as if her obligation, her desire, to protect her partner extended beyond the mere physical. It dawned on Kirika that she wanted to safeguard *all* of Mireille-physically *and* emotionally. She wanted to ensure that the blonde was… happy, as well as in good health. Not in particular happy being with her; simply generally content with life. She wanted Mireille to always be able to smile. *Truly* smile. A genuinely, happily smiling Mireille made Kirika want to smile in joy, too.

As was typical of her character, Mireille's compulsion to delay getting up was quashed in favour of what she deemed the more appropriate behaviour of boldly facing the new day. Kirika had known that her partner's yearning to remain would be brushed aside, yet couldn't prevent feeling disappointed when the blonde moved to roll out of her embrace and end their peaceful, blissful, time together in bed. Reluctantly she let Mireille slip out from under her as the woman turned over onto her right side and then sat up on the edge of the bed, Kirika's limbs-once akin to the potency of iron bands-willed into contrasting flaccidity with notable effort; toned muscles made limp and the reflex to tighten them, to hold on desperately to the person she loved, overridden with the dearth of vigour. Kirika considered asking Mireille not to leave, but she had already requested it once-if not out loud-and the thought of asking again made her feel uncomfortable, though why she couldn't pinpoint. Besides, she didn't believe that Mireille would treat her again anyway; it had been a small miracle that the blonde had consented to staying in bed the first time. Normally once Mireille ascertained that Kirika was awake, she couldn't leave it fast enough.

Mireille took a moment to put on her slippers where she had left them by the bed last night, and then stood up, stretching her arms behind her head with a faint groan of discomfort, her muscles no doubt aching. Her departure of the bed proper pulled the sheets off of Kirika's lean body all the way down to the girl's waist and bared her to the cold air of the apartment, a product of the winter's weather outdoors. But rather than the air's cool touch, it was the loss of Mireille's cosy body that produced the shudder which consequently wracked Kirika's forlorn form. She missed her partner's presence pressed next to her as soon as it had left, and it was as though that sentiment had manifested itself in a physical reaction. She felt naked without her, exposed to the elements… and alone to face them. Kirika's craving for Mireille was akin to her need for breathing-an eternal, crucial factor mandatory for her to live. But she always suffered the same acute separation anxiety whenever the blonde departed her company, not just when the woman left the bed in the mornings. Incidentally, the length of that separation had no bearing either; it could be for a minute or an hour, irrespective the feeling and its intensity were identical.

There was an exception however; the separation anxiety was vastly heightened in these morning cases. Kirika suspected it could be because of her and Mireille's wonderful close quarters throughout the entire night beforehand. The captivating bodily contact was a dynamic that made the subsequent absence of Mireille more… real. The loss of Mireille's touch, her scent, her warmth, was a loss that was tangible and hence was felt more keenly. Nevertheless, Kirika had survived it before and would recover from it… eventually.

Mireille, as if sensing Kirika's deep feelings of isolation, turned her head back to the bed following her stretch, back to the now glum girl she had left behind. Her look started out mildly inquiring, but merely an instant after her tired eyes fell on Kirika her expression softened considerably, making her appear even more fatigued yet somehow more resplendent all at once. She smiled tenderly and almost a shade sympathetically at Kirika, and for a brief, shining second the hopeful girl actually thought Mireille was reconsidering her choice of getting up, and may well be rejoining her under the sheets momentarily to once more grant her the luxury of her cherished companionship.

But sadly neither Mireille's look nor her loitering lasted-a moment later she turned her head away from Kirika and set off with slumped shoulders in a somewhat staggered path towards the bathroom, stifling a wide but civilised yawn with a hand as she went.

Kirika watched her partner go until the woman reached the bathroom and shut the door, thwarting her view. The young assassin exhaled softly and then simply lay where she was on her stomach, making no attempt to readjust the covers over herself and keep the apartment's chill at bay. The bed was cold and uninviting now without Mireille; it held no appeal at all for Kirika to remain. She could not linger for too long even if she wished to anyway, unless she wanted to be scolded by Mireille once the blonde came out of the bathroom. No, like Mireille, Kirika must boldly face the new day. Make no mistake, however, it wasn't a displeasing prospect by any means. She had breakfast with Mireille to look forward to, and that was always a pleasant affair. Food seemed to have a richer, fuller taste when it was eaten with the woman, as if her sheer presence added some sort of mystery spice to every morsel consumed. But before Kirika could revel in such delicacies, breakfast would have to be prepared first.

Gently shaking the residual lethargy from her head, Kirika sat up and then scooted over to the edge of the bed, before climbing out of it. She padded bare foot across the rug by the bed and then down the short flight of steps into the living room. The floorboards were frigid planks beneath the soles of her feet, and the general cold of the room wafted on her arms and legs, the limbs uncovered by her nightwear comprising only of a thin vest and petite shorts. None of it bothered Kirika though; the temperature was not life threatening, just unappealing, but easily within tolerable limits for her. It was below her notice.

However, Kirika was not so indifferent to the iciness of the apartment that she wasn't mindful that her more sensitive partner probably found it disagreeable. Mireille didn't benefit from the environmental conditioning she had undertaken whilst in Altena's 'care'. Kirika had been inured to withstand extreme climates and in turn continue to perform at peak proficiency as an assassin in them; blasted desert plains; frozen, snow-encrusted tundras; muggy, monsoonal jungles; none of those settings' hardships debilitated her as they would an average individual. Kirika possessed the ability to simply block them out, to forbid them from taxing her mind and thus weakening her body. Nevertheless, this didn't make her body immune to the harm those harsh climates could inflict upon it in the form of dehydration, frostbite, pneumonia and the like, and consequently measures still had to be taken to protect her health.

Kirika switched on the radiators under the apartment's row of windows, and turned the heat up to a level she was sure Mireille would feel most comfortable in. The girl hoped that at least the bite would be taken out of the chill before her partner completed her ablutions in the bathroom. She couldn't imagine that it was any warmer in there than it was in the rest of the apartment at present, so it would be a nice surprise for Mireille to step out of the frosty bathroom and into contrasting warmth.

But there was a good chance that the radiators would have barely had an opportunity to do their job before Mireille returned, so Kirika scurried into the kitchen to assemble an alternative remedy to stave off the cold and also to make a start on breakfast. Once there, the diligent girl threw herself eagerly into her chores. Picking up the kettle, she filled it with water and then placed it on the stove, the latter she then turned on. While she waited for the kettle's contents to be heated, she trotted over to the breadbin and took out a crusty white loaf with one hand and placed it on the nearby breadboard, while her other deftly drew a breadknife from the knife block. Kirika twirled the knife unconsciously between her nimble fingers as she lowered its serrated blade to the loaf-a whirlwind of silver in her hand-and then cleanly sawed off four slices from one end. She left the knife on the breadboard and then scooped the slices up in her hands, before moving over to the toaster, plopping them into the appliance. The busy girl next pulled down the lever on one side of the toaster causing the bread slices to be swallowed into its interior, and then after sparing a perfunctory glance at the kettle, nodded to herself in satisfaction.

Kirika's preparations thus far were naturally only for the scant beginnings of breakfast. Because of the winter weather, she had opted to make something more ample than simple cereal and toast, and moreover something hot cooked to help both her and her partner through the evidently chilly day ahead. But before that, her alternative heat remedy for Mireille took priority. Kirika could hear running water coming from the bathroom now, which was her signal that the blonde's reappearance was imminent-she had to hurry.

Kirika took out a brightly polished, ornate silverware tray from a cupboard and then began setting it with all the necessary tableware and crockery for tea. By the time she had finished arranging the tray and supplying the requisite sugar to the sugar bowl and milk to the milk jug, the kettle was whistling its come to boil. She quickly turned off the stove before hoisting the kettle gingerly from its spot, and then poured its hot contents into the teapot which was already the home of several teabags, deposited there earlier by the girl. After replacing the lid on the teapot and putting the kettle back on the stove, Kirika placed the centrepiece of the tea set on the laden tray, beside the pair of matching cups and saucers that sat in amongst the other pieces of crockery. For the final touch, she popped an embroidered tea cosy on the teapot, ensuring it stayed warm on this cold morning.

"Yoisho," Kirika uttered as she lifted the now complete silverware tray from the counter, and then carried it into the living room. The water in a drinking glass also allotted a spot on the tray by her earlier swished in its confines as she went, the clear glass looking out of place amid the fine china, although its presence there was almost as important as the tea set itself.

Kirika carefully set the tray down on the round table by one end of the living room, it visible from the narrow kitchen. Free of her burden, she looked to her right in time to see Mireille wander down the bedroom stairs, appearing a little fresher than when she last saw her but nonetheless still exhausted. As Kirika had anticipated, once the woman traversed the steps she immediately headed for her computer on top of the billiard table to presumably check her email-it was her typical morning routine, one the observant girl knew well. Mireille did, however, make a temporary halt to inspect her lavender coat she had slung over the uneven black partition after coming home last night. The woman raised the bottom hem of the garment between a finger and thumb while she frowned crossly at the mud-caked grass stains striping its back brown and green, reminders of her tumble across Laroque's lawn after diving through his broken library window.

A few seconds later Mireille then sighed and let her coat slip from her grasp, before pursing her lips in distaste. She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing her short blonde fringe back, and then scratched her head as she went on glowering at her dirty coat, as if attempting to intimidate it into becoming clean again. Kirika wouldn't be surprised if her partner really succeeded-her blue gaze could be as piercing as steel daggers if she wished it… and just as painful for the one under it. Many times Kirika had borne that look, but it was tranquil blue skies that fell upon her diminutive form nowadays. It was certainly a great improvement. Being stabbed by Mireille's disapproving eye had been a blow she could never hope to dodge, and caused a wound that festered for weeks.

Mireille eventually gave up glaring at her coat and dropped her hand back to her side, resuming her well-worn path to her computer before settling herself in the chair in front of it. Kirika looked away from her partner and focused on finishing what would probably become her own morning routine if the current weather persisted. The apartment still felt rather chilly, the radiators, as previously predicted, having done little to rout the cold assaulting the place. That was the purpose of the tea; to heat Mireille right down to her bones, and subsequently enable her body to fend off the still present cold until she ate a nice hot breakfast or the radiators prevailed in their endeavour, whichever came first.

Kirika removed the cosy from the teapot and poured Mireille a cup of tea, adding one teaspoon of sugar and just a dash of skimmed milk, the resulting concoction appearing as though a white tempest had been caught in a mocha sea. She then ran the teaspoon through the full cup once and once only before laying it down on the saucer-just enough for the sugar and milk to blend with the tea and no more. One teaspoon of sugar, one splash of skimmed milk, and no stirring whatsoever-it was just how Mireille liked it. When Kirika had first learned how to make tea, memorising the precise servings of milk and sugar that made up the woman's ideal cup and understanding exactly how to prepare it had been the topmost item on her agenda. It had taken practice however, through which Mireille had been very patient stomaching some unappetising if heartfelt attempts whilst providing supportive remarks and useful feedback after their tasting. Now Kirika had Mireille's blend ingrained in her mind like her techniques on assassination; a permanent nugget of knowledge among countless that she would never forget.

Kirika popped the cosy back on the teapot-it would not do to have the tea go cold while breakfast was being cooked-and then picking up Mireille's cup of tea and the half-full glass of water, she walked over to the billiard table where her partner was sitting.

Mireille didn't look up as Kirika approached, the woman occupied with staring grimly at her computer screen, her expression far colder than the room's low temperature. Kirika wondered what had educed such a sour look, but as she rounded the billiard table and neared Mireille, the blonde immediately swivelled her chair around to face her, all smiles, and her shoulder now subtly obscuring the monitor and whatever unpleasantness it might have displayed.

"Thank you," Mireille said gratefully as she took the tea Kirika offered to her, before lifting the cup to her lips and taking an experimental sip. When she lowered the cup from her mouth back to the saucer her smile had grown fuller, and she favoured the girl responsible with a pleased look, obviously approving of the flavour.

Kirika smiled demurely back at Mireille, though thrilled to have satisfied her. It was moments like this that made all the effort she put in worthwhile. It awarded an immense sense of gratification to her, one that had no rival. Pleasing Mireille with her skills in murder left her feeling hollow, but pleasing the blonde in any other way left her feeling fulfilled. It made Kirika feel warm inside.

"Are you not cold?" Mireille inquired curiously before taking another, longer, sip of her tea, eyeing her partner from bare shoulders to bare feet over the cup's rim.

"Mm," Kirika said with an emphatic shake of her head, her small smile still strong on her delicate features. She then turned around to cater to the orchid resting on the end table a couple of feet behind her, it too awaiting a beverage from her, albeit a cold and flavourless one, but one just as beneficial all the same.

"Of course…" Kirika heard Mireille say wryly under her breath as she moved.

Kirika could feel Mireille looking at her as she watered their orchid from the glass in her hand, spreading the life-giving fluid meticulously around its stalk, smiling all the while. The plant hadn't made much progress towards blooming, but Kirika was dedicated to one day witnessing its flowers; she somehow believed that they would be breathtaking, and worth the time and hard work she and her partner devoted to nurturing their advent.

"Do you need any help with breakfast?" Mireille eventually asked following several moments of silently observing Kirika's back and her gardening labours. The woman's voice was somewhat soft and distracted as if her query wasn't a serious one, or as if there was something heavier on her mind than mere breakfast.

Kirika hesitated in answering. If truth were told, Mireille's assistance with breakfast wouldn't go amiss. While the teenage assassin had committed the recipes for the most popular and straightforward breakfast dishes to memory, her pains to follow them and duplicate the end product were not perfect and some endeavours even flopped outright. Mireille had told her that her theory was sound, but her execution was unfortunately lacking in some areas. Kirika blamed her failures to date on the recipes themselves. They simply weren't detailed enough and were devoid of contingency directions; for example in the event her pancake stuck to the frying pan, how was she supposed to free it without it crumbling? If instructions written in the same style were used for munitions deployment, then the girl was sure severe injuries would result and possibly even fatalities. Cooking wasn't as easy as killing.

"Okay, I'll help," Mireille said with a slight smile in her tone, no doubt picking up on her partner's uncertainty.

Kirika was relieved. She still couldn't go without Mireille's assistance whilst trying to cook. Furthermore, with the more experienced woman's mentoring she was confident she would in due course master the skill of cooking for all mealtimes, not just breakfast. No matter what Kirika would persevere. Like her toiling with making tea, she wanted to be able to become thoroughly proficient in preparing meals for the woman she loved, with the blonde's favourite dishes naturally given special preference. The withdrawn but soft-hearted girl just wanted to demonstrate to Mireille how much she treasured her, how much she adored her; how much she loved her. It was but a small demonstration of course, like the tea, merely the tiniest statement of her feelings for her partner. Yet that didn't make it not worth doing. Every gesture counted in Kirika's view; every way she could show her enormous affection for Mireille was important. The size of the gesture didn't matter. The sentiments behind it did.

"We have a meeting with Breffort," Mireille divulged in an abrupt and grave change of subject, her tone all business to match it. Kirika's smile vanished with equal alacrity.

The bloated black cloud suspended overhead had burst, and bad memories were suddenly cascading down like acid rain. Everything that had happened last night came surging back to Kirika, stinging blows on her mind-the cacophony of gunfire, the shed blood on the floor, the bodies of the dead, their quarry's escape, a dark text's resurrection-everything, along with all the potential ramifications of each that were no improvement on their forebears' caustic bite. Bad memories to be sure, but in retrospect Kirika realised that she wouldn't have done anything differently. The people she had killed, the lives that had been lost-they had all been deserving of death, sinners duly expunged from the face of the world and back to the wicked place that had birthed them. And as long as Mireille's life was not among those snuffed out, what did it matter who died? Kirika didn't regret killing those men who had been so intent on doing the same to her and the woman she loved. She felt they had deserved it. Anybody who raised a hand to Mireille deserved it.

Yet that premise sat uneasy in Kirika. That, and that she hadn't woken up truly horrified this morning at the murders she had carried out. A part of her whispered why should she be, why should she have compassion for those she had killed, for those who had threatened Mireille? She had simply been fulfilling a promise, a duty; one worth far more than those men's lives. Deserving of death indeed. But who deemed someone deserving of death; who was she to decide who lived and who died? She was the executioner, not the judge… or was she too the judge? She had judged those men last night, and those men before in the Metro. Who or what really determined who was deserving of death? Her, the one who held the gun that delivered that end, the one who exercised it against another? Or the people who hired Kirika and Mireille's services perhaps, those clients who paid money or provided another incentive for someone's untimely demise? Both parties acted as the judge to some degree. Maybe it was those who held the means to inflict that death who decided who warranted it. Kirika didn't know; she had never really thought about it before now. She had never thought about how her skills at killing bestowed the prerogative for her to choose who lived and who died. The girl held the fates of countless sinners in her hands… hands that could easily extinguish them.

[Certainly a great power indeed. But it is your right to wield it.]

Kirika set the now empty drinking glass on the end table beside the potted orchid, and then straightened. She turned back to Mireille who regarded her soberly. Her face was expressionless, all business, as if having already donned the veiling executioner's hood. She reminded herself that all peace was short-lived for her kind.

Kirika nodded to her fellow assassin in compliance.

* * *

Mireille looked up through the dark tint of her sunglasses at the massive glass pyramid that jutted out of the ground before her, bordered by triangular pools of water that boasted a series of high-spurting fountains at their centre. It was quite an impressive sight, a modern architectural marvel. Or so people said. Mireille believed the pyramid a bit of an eyesore herself in this setting, clashing with the distinct amalgamation of sixteenth and eighteenth century French and Italian design that made up the sprawling Louvre palace that partially enclosed it. Still, both structures were works of art in their own right. Fitting for the largest museum in France, and one of the largest on Earth.

Situated almost at the heart of Paris along the banks of the Seine, Mireille had seen the vast and regal structure of the Louvre museum from the outside many times whilst traversing the streets of the capitol city, but had never had the opportunity nor in fact had ever felt the inclination to venture within the expanse of its walls before now. However, that didn't mean she wasn't familiar with it. It was after all one of the most famous and 'must see' attractions in Paris, perhaps even in the world, home to around three hundred thousand artefacts, sculptures, and paintings-including such distinguished works as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo-spanning a variety of civilisations and cultures, some dating from as far back as six thousand years before Christ. But despite how impressive it all sounded, Mireille and Kirika were not here for the fine art. Regrettably.

The assassins were instead reluctantly standing here, with the Richelieu and Denon wings of the Louvre museum flanking them, at Breffort's request, it having been received via email on Mireille's computer earlier this morning… although why exactly they were convening at this precise locale was a mystery understood only by him. The message had been in the standard style of the stern Soldats official, short and to the point, the time and the place for the meeting stated but nothing else. He'd made no comment on last night's unproductive carnage, but Mireille knew without a doubt that it would be his topic of conversation for this little get-together. Believing it coincidence that he had scheduled a meeting so soon after the false Noir's latest escape of her and her partner's bullets was a fool's conviction. As Ryosuke had said, there were no coincidences when Soldats was involved.

Mireille certainly didn't think Breffort would be congratulating her and Kirika on a job well done, either. Not that she particularly cared. She wasn't seeking Breffort's approval in any way, shape or form. While her and her partner's goals may coincide with the man's, that was where their association ceased-they were independent parties to him, and independent parties to the despicable organisation he belonged to. Mireille did not see herself and Kirika as working for him, but rather working *with* him, and extremely tenuously at that. She had even debated earlier to perhaps dispense with patronising this meeting all together, just to make a point that she and Kirika were not at his beck and call. But she had obviously decided against it, on the grounds that Breffort was still an ally of sorts against the Ryosuke and Vincent, and could have information beneficial to their mutual cause… even if that cause was made mutual by his scheming.

Maybe Breffort believed different about Mireille and Kirika's relationship with him-Soldats' arrogance knew no bounds, and he was no exception-but if he did and attempted to manipulate the blonde today as he had done-with, the Corsican grudgingly confessed, tremendous success-in their previous meeting, then he would be in for a *very* rude awakening. Never again would she abide outsiders twisting her feelings for Kirika to their own benefit. Breffort had cunningly used them before to strongarm her into agreeing to throw away a perfectly tranquil and perfectly enjoyable lifestyle in order to dispose of Ryosuke and Vincent, two criminals completely unconnected to her and her partner in any way beyond their use of the young women's old alias, Noir-an awful revelation that had fully hit Mireille far too late, and one that had demonstrated to her with total, staggering clarity how much of a liability her once staunch heart had become. It had been the first time that Mireille's love for Kirika had worked against her, but the woman swore it was also the last. She would *not* allow anyone to ever again sway her good sense by playing on her fears concerning her relationship with Kirika. Or at any rate, she would try her utmost to uphold that oath. She knew it would be intensely challenging indeed; her own rejuvenated sentimentality could be labelled as the most formidable adversary she had ever faced in all her years in the assassination business. And this hardening of her heart against outsider's taunts was but the first line of defence in protecting herself from it. *Protecting* herself from it, yes, because she neither had the desire nor the power to smother it wholly.

Mireille recognised that she'd been getting too sentimental of late and perhaps had been for a long while now, it starting quite possibly as far back to when she had conceded to work jointly with Kirika on a 'pilgrimage for the past'. Small and trifling it had begun, hardly noticeable if at all and thus permissible, albeit whether she liked it or not, but these days it had developed to such a scale and strength that the woman was now so wrapped up in her feelings for her cute partner that she had been unwittingly allowing them to influence her ordinarily stable and impartial judgement. It was a clear and present vulnerability in her otherwise professional conduct as a contract killer, one she had flagged as having to be dealt with as soon as possible if not immediately before it gave rise to her untimely end. She didn't aim to be a stone cold murderer by any means, but she didn't want to be a soft one either; it would threaten to plant undesirable seeds of doubt in her heart, doubt that would eventually bloom and cause her to question every pull of her gun's trigger, to question every life she was hired to take, to question who truly was deserving of death. It would not be good for business nor for her health, she predicted.

However, separating her business life from her personal life wasn't so simple, since both were intimately entwined with one another, like two lovers' clasped hands, or their joined lips, or their writhing bodies locked together in the throes of heated pass-Mireille winced slightly, wondering where those comparisons had come from, and then ruthlessly reigned in her errant imagination before it came up with any more romantic-yet highly disturbing-analogies. Heaven help her; she was more far-gone than she'd thought.

But back on track-Mireille's lone business partner was Kirika, the girl who also encompassed the Corsican's entire personal life, which made the division of the two aspects of her existence nigh on impossible. It left the woman with quite a dilemma on her hands. She could always do as she had done before; close off her heart, embrace formality and act as if she were nothing more than a colleague to Kirika whilst on assignment. But Kirika was a needy girl emotionally, and such aloof behaviour would-and had before, Mireille recalled with an unappetising cocktail of sadness and guilt-result in the younger assassin becoming upset until she too closed off her heart, retreating back into her introverted shell. It would certainly bring ruin to the relationship they shared and that Mireille held so dear; that much was evident from the similar distressing happenings that had taken place only a couple of weeks ago. Furthermore, the blonde wasn't sure that her heart would let her be apathetic to Kirika again even when they were on the job, not after those aforementioned happenings that had ended with the sensitive girl crying her eyes out against her chest. Mireille had vowed to never again deny Kirika the love and attention she so plainly needed, and the woman would *not* break that vow.

But perhaps there was a way for the latter approach to work if Mireille were to somehow rationalise it to Kirika so she'd understand not to take any of her professional detachment to heart. The girl would have to be taught to understand as well why there was call to have a clear distinction between their business life and their personal life. Kirika was as stoic as ever presently, but if Mireille's labours to beget the contrary in her partner came to fruition then who knew what she'd be like in the future. Regardless of how indifferent Mireille was, it would not do to have Kirika's own affection completely uninhibited; the woman's efforts to keep things business-like would be severely undermined. She could just see herself, coldly pointing her Walther in her right hand at a target, her face grim as Death… while Kirika was snuggled under her free arm and hugging her enthusiastically around the waist with one of her own, the other dutifully aiming her pistol at the target. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad… but still, it just wouldn't be proper comportment at all, and couldn't be good in the long run. In any case, it was a method that had potential. Mireille would have to give it some more serious consideration however before she could pursue it with Kirika, and also determine how to best explain it all to her.

There was a lot to be said about the single life, Mireille thought sardonically, her lips twisting in mild exasperation. She certainly didn't have these concerns before accepting a partner into her business and life. But nonetheless, she wouldn't have it any other way.

Along with Breffort's message being brief and succinct, one more thing it had been was incredibly prompt, or it had at least initially given that impression. The timestamp on his email had been scarcely a handful of hours after the time Mireille and Kirika had returned home last night, which, in view of the barely pre-dawn period when the assassins' violent jaunt across Paris had come to a standstill, was rather remarkable indeed. Yet it wasn't as if Mireille and Kirika's activities the previous night had been at all quiet, despite their efforts for the opposite. They had been forced to storm a strip club belonging to a local criminal syndicate-a local criminal syndicate that had *somehow* learned they were coming, the precise explanation for that little phenomenon still a mystery Mireille doubted she would ever solve, now-and then engage in a frenzied shootout with possibly the entire, suddenly well-armed and well positioned group, before subsequently killing every member present and then walking out of the premises with it left ablaze in their wake. Then for the finale following a quick detour to pick up a trail and inadvertently stumble upon a few fresh corpses that were this time not the product of their hands, the assassins had infiltrated a wealthy man's manor to trade gunfire with their elusive quarry inside, and then fight their way out of the building and the estate proper, chasing vainly after them all the while. Very little of it had emulated the elegant manner in which Mireille preferred to operate in, to put it *very* lightly.

As a result, the majority of Mireille and Kirika's bloody handiwork last night had been splattered all over this morning's news, the mediums of newspaper, radio *and* television each judging it worthy of the public eye's glare. Perhaps Mireille should feel honoured for her and her partner's deeds to obtain such widespread interest, but it wasn't as though the rotting fruits of their vocation hadn't been awarded media attention before. As a general rule, the higher the profile of the hit, the greater the level of press coverage. However, a high body count also invoked comparable attention. Mireille could understand the rationale behind both. It was to be expected that if someone famous-or infamous, as was usually the case in her and Kirika's line of work-met their downfall, then likewise their death would be renowned as well, maybe even more so depending on the circumstances and the person concerned. As for a high number of fatalities attracting similar notice, that was purely based on human beings' fundamentally barbaric natures. When it came down to it, that was always what inspired the public's fascination-the tragic loss of life itself. People were on the whole fond of bloodshed, real or make-believe, no matter what they said to deny it. Why else would they pay to see it in the movies, watch it so avidly on their television sets? It was a form of entertainment, a macabre one, often glorified by the media and film industry. Not until they had lived a life on the black path surrounded by slaughter, the blood and death up close and personal, would they wise up and shake off their ghoulish attachment. As for Mireille herself, she hadn't been to the cinema in years and didn't even own a television, discounting her computer's ability to mimic one.

The news reports so far had been restricted to the massacre of Millet's pitiful gang in Pigalle, the bonfire the dead man's headquarters had become surely having acted as a signal flare in the murky sky last night that the authorities and press had flocked to. After the flames of the impromptu pyre had been put out, Mireille imagined it had been quite a shock for them to uncover over a dozen broiled carcasses shot full of holes, carcasses belonging to thugs probably well-known by the police. The newscasters and journalists were labelling it the fallout of a feud between rival gangs, possibly related to the car bombing approximately two weeks prior. They were no more than vaguely correct, as usual. Once a thorough examination had been performed on what remained of the bodies, only then would it be realised that they all were linked to the same, now defunct, organisation; invalidating the gang war theory. Mireille knew that neither the authorities nor the media would ever learn the truth behind what really had taken place in Slick Chicks last night. They rarely did when she had a hand in events.

But even without the news exposure Breffort would have still been privy to the knowledge that Millet was now amongst the dead and his syndicate was in tatters, if that much had even survived. The Soldats member had had an agent in the head gangster's midst after all; Jacques, the individual responsible for couriering his tip-off to Mireille and Kirika… rather inconveniently *after* the young women had slain everybody else in Slick Chicks. The Corsican was still unsure whether that had been intentional or not. Jacques had been a jittery fellow, so perhaps he had simply opted to keep his cowardly head down until it was safe to talk to her and Kirika, for fear that if he happened to be seen doing so beforehand, he would incur the wrath of his 'peers'. Mireille dryly supposed it could be called cunning as well as cowardly if it were true. It was a combination of traits all of Soldats' followers seemed to have. But whatever the cause of Jacques' delay in delivering the message, with him having escaped Millet's headquarters in one piece, he would have been able to give Breffort a first hand account on the chaos that had taken place there, a privileged version of events considerably more detailed and accurate than the media's reports.

In addition, Breffort's connection to Soldats would have been the only way he could have heard about the most significant incidents that had transpired the previous night, the ones revolving around Ryosuke and Vincent at Laroque's abode. The television and radio news bulletins and even the newspapers with their broader coverage on the city's and the world's daily happenings had all been bereft of any report regarding the firefight on the collector's immense property, not so much as even a passing blurb printed. Although, Mireille hadn't believed for a moment that anything would have been mentioned. Firstly, Albert Laroque was a very prosperous individual, and had probably easily suppressed the police's involvement before day had even broken, perhaps feeding money to his pet officers kept neatly in his pocket until their sated appetites superseded their sense of duty-whatever was left of it. And without the authorities' backing, the press were unlikely to even be aware of the shooting disturbances at his manor last night.

Secondly, Albert Laroque was of Soldats' crop, which for all intents and purposes precluded his affairs from being publicised due to the innate characteristics of the enigmatic group he was affiliated with. The evidence that he was a member wasn't conclusive to be sure, but Mireille's intuition spoke it to be true, and, after all, she'd had considerable-if unwanted-experience dealing with such nefarious people. The inclusion of Langonel's Manuscript with the other rare books in the man's extensive library had been the chief indication, although in retrospect it had also been the solitary one. But Soldats *was* a secret society, and had guarded that secrecy for over a thousand years; it wasn't as if a member freely broadcasted her or his affiliation. Regardless, with copies of Langonel's Manuscript all but lost to the world, and with its great import to the clandestine group of Soldats, Mireille didn't think the global organisation would ever permit a copy of the tome to languish in the private collection of one who was not indoctrinated into their order.

Thus, with Laroque likely allied with Soldats, and in light of Breffort's lofty standing within the society, news of the aggressive break-in of the first man's home and the ensuing robbery of Langonel's Manuscript from his possession had doubtless reached the second man's ears, especially when an item of such importance was involved, and had been stolen no less.

Therefore, maybe it wasn't such a grand feat that Breffort's email had been sent to Mireille's computer so swiftly. Truly, the blonde would have been astounded if it *hadn't*.

Given her prior careful contemplation on the matter, Mireille suspected that Breffort would be thoroughly conversant with everything that had happened during that long stretch of darkness last night. Still, in accordance to her credo, she judged it prudent to withhold her own knowledge on events, not revealing anything she didn't have to unless the Soldats official did first. Breffort had proved himself to be a conniving scoundrel-something Mireille ought to have expected from a Soldats follower of the upper echelons-and the Corsican assassin would have to keep her wits about her lest he succeed in manoeuvring her to his compelling will again. She was not Soldats-and thankful for it-but she could still be just as cunning. As for Kirika, Mireille wouldn't have to worry about her speaking out of turn. The introverted girl often retained her own counsel when it was only the two of them-a fact that disheartened Mireille, and one she strived to change-and would be even less talkative in the company of an outsider, possibly doubly so when that outsider was of Soldats.

One detail of last night's escapades that Mireille believed Breffort might not be wise to, however, was of Simon's grisly murder in his shop basement; a murder that had encompassed two of his unlucky associates in its lethal embrace as well. Or put more bluntly, it was unlikely that Breffort cared of the boy's or his companions' eventual fates enough to have his operatives bother to check what ultimately fatal card they had all been dealt. And Mireille knew he'd had operatives in the vicinity-how else would he have known that Ryosuke and Vincent were at Simon's store? It was even possible that the Soldats official had still been tracking the false Noir's movements even after 'recruiting' Mireille and Kirika, but had made sure that his spies stayed well out of sight to both pairs of assassins. It was speculation that the blonde woman had engaged in before; that Breffort's black-clad spooks were watching her and her partner constantly, yet on orders not to interfere with their lives.

But the mere revived notion prompted Mireille to feel uneasy, nervous tension creeping into her spine, tightening the joints until they ached in protest. She disliked being kept under a watchful, secretive eye, especially if that eye belonged to Soldats. She supposed that the Louvre was swarming with the organisation's minions right this minute even if her supposition was incorrect; Breffort would not travel outside of his office building lacking ample defensive assurances. Mireille's shoulders stiffened to match her spine's tautness at the thought, picturing that unseen gun sights were already trained on her and Kirika, and had been ever since they had entered courtyard Napoleon.

The newspapers whose pages Mireille had quickly thumbed through at a newsstand before coming here had been devoid of any article on the gruesome killings in Simon's basement, but unlike the incidents at Laroque's estate, it was apathy that was responsible for the gulf of information. Like Breffort, the media no doubt saw the murders of three teenagers in an unsavoury part of town insignificant, a trivial occurrence that probably happened on a weekly basis there; small news compared to the 'gang war' story of the same night. News unworthy of public consideration, of documentation. Of remembrance. Maybe their remains hadn't even been discovered yet. Maybe Simon and the others were still lying where they had been struck down so young, rotting alone in their dank tomb. Merely more forgotten victims of the black path, their bodies having been coldly trampled beneath the heels of those who walk it. People like Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu. And Mireille Bouquet. The woman was aware that she, like everyone else, would not remember Simon or his companions. They were simply acquaintances she had lost touch with, after all, and after today she would never again think of them. She knew it was better that way from losing her family, the only departed people who had been a part of her life she ever dwelled on, the only people whose memories of she clung to. The only grief she would allow herself. Even her Uncle Claude wasn't granted that respect, not after….

But Simon, Ezza and their unidentified cohort would be avenged. Acquaintances they may have been, mere assets to her occupation to be used at her whim, but Mireille felt she owed them that much. It was something the Corsican assassin always accomplished without fail-vengeance for the people lost to her, be they acquaintance, friend, relation, or lover. It could be said that her immediate family had been the only ones deprived of that retribution, but in Mireille's eyes that vendetta had been settled with Altena's passing. As stated before, Kirika had simply been the instrument of their demise, nothing more. In the event Mireille had wrongly punished Kirika with a bullet, the lone means to avenge the girl would have been to raze all of Soldats to the ground… and then turn her gun on herself. She should be thankful that her heart had had other wishes for her partner.

Mireille weary blue eyes softened behind her sunglasses, her expression that had been severe during her grim ruminations turning gentle. Indeed, she was hugely thankful. Kirika was alone responsible for coaxing her long dead heart into beating again.

Reflected light gleamed dazzlingly off the rows of skewed rectangular glass panes that made up the Louvre's pyramid entrance, its source the bright sun high overhead, ruling the virtually cloudless sky. But it was a deceptive glow, a vivid but empty shine bereft of warmth. The temperature was still freezing below the sun, Mireille's hot breath fogging the air like puffs of smoke. She was as glad for her brownish-grey coat that warded off the cold as she was for her dark pair of sunglasses that diffused the intense bars of light.

Despite winter's inhospitable presence, a slew of visitors populated the Louvre museum, the courtyard around the pyramid lightly dotted with roaming people braving the weather. No doubt they had been taken in by the false hope the bright sun presented, it promising a warm, pleasant day that would never come. Mireille could relate. A naïve part of her was optimistic that this appointment with Breffort spelled the finish of her and Kirika's divergence from a peaceful way of life; that perhaps after their recent failure to kill the dour Ryosuke and his flamboyant comrade, and the blatant commotion they had caused in Pigalle and in the home of one of the Soldats official's order; he had decided it safer to terminate their association before his colleagues on the clandestine society's council caught wind of any links between them. But the larger part of Mireille knew better. Breffort wouldn't give up on them that easily. She and Kirika had once been Noir, after all, the Eternal Darkness, the supposed Black Hands of Soldats. And with Langonel's Manuscript's sudden inclusion in the equation, matters had become even more serious. Plus not to mention that Ryosuke and Vincent were now privy to Mireille and Kirika's faces. The men could not be tolerated continuing to live with that knowledge.

Mireille looked to Kirika who was standing roughly a foot from her left shoulder, wondering if she held a similar naïve hope, or a speck of one at any rate. The quiet girl was staring at the glass pyramid in front of them with a seemingly uninterested countenance, her hands stuffed in her parka's pockets; an unplanned exhibition of stoicism in the Louvre's Napoleon courtyard. But the otherwise flawless demonstration was spoiled by her visibly squinting in the strong sunlight, partially blinded by the false hope. Mireille cynically reminded herself to procure a pair of sunglasses for Kirika as soon as possible.

"Afterward, why don't we have a wander around?" Mireille gaily invited her innocent partner, her features persuasive in their hastily adopted tenderness. "This is probably the finest museum in the country, and is famous throughout the world. But I haven't had a chance to see it, myself."

It wasn't as if Mireille was keen to explore the museum, but she believed that any faith Kirika harboured that their hunt for Ryosuke and Vincent was over with would be cruelly dashed aside once Breffort's meeting had ended, and as a result the feeling-hearted girl would need cheering up. From what she could tell through the reserved shell that cloaked Kirika's emotions-the darkhaired girl's expressive eyes being the only reliable and fixed peepholes inside-spending quality time alone together simply pursuing everyday pleasures always appeared to make her happy. What's more, the older woman hardly ever passed up an opportunity to further her partner's rather deficient general education. The exhibits of the Louvre were plentiful indeed, and although it was doubtful that they would be able to see them all in a single visit, it would still provide a comprehensive history lesson for Kirika. Mireille decided that she would focus on French history first, that was, of course, if Kirika agreed to her proposal. But the blonde knew she would. Kirika never queried any of her suggestions, or at least not any unrelated to their profession. The girl was always so eager to please.

"Mm," Kirika acceded with a look and a nod, squinting up at Mireille.

Mireille smiled at the girl's predictability. "It's settled then," she said. "I'm sure it will prove to be fascinating… and quite the learning experience." The last was added somewhat apprehensively, the woman just realising that her own ability in history-including French history-wasn't precisely stellar. She really hoped that the pieces on display in the museum were accompanied by plaques or something narrating their origin. She was confident she could bluff her way through her lectures to Kirika if she had at least some concrete facts to base each one on.

Kirika nodded once again, this time solemnly, maybe recognising Mireille's teaching ambitions for their now planned tour of the Louvre. It wouldn't be the first occasion the blonde had tried to school the girl on more than just how to kill someone efficiently. She had taken Kirika to the opera a few times, in an endeavour to expose her partner to some culture, as well as to entertain her in the process. Kirika gave the impression she liked it, although she tended to sidle close to Mireille in her seat, pressing her body hard against the armrest that separated them. Being a member of a large audience, enclosed on all sides save one seemed to make her edgy. But when the curtain was raised and the opera itself begun, the melodic singing that washed over them eventually relaxed her.

Just as Mireille began to wonder where Breffort was, and if she and her partner should forsake their engagement after all and commence their sightseeing of the museum early, Kirika turned her head back to the pyramid, the motion educing the blonde to do likewise. With jumbled emotions Mireille caught sight of the man in question emerging from the glass belly of the pyramid that doubled as an underground entrance to the Louvre palace, and on this specific occasion that's perimeter acted as their designated meeting place as well.

Breffort limped slowly towards the two assassins through the people who crisscrossed his path, the cane by his side crested with the semblance of a golden bird's head compensating for the weakness in his bad right leg. He was attired in the same trend as normal; in a suit, shirt and tie of drab, muted colours; tones of blacks and greys that the eye seemed to overlook, the Soldats official blending into the background, a discounted facet of the sparse crowd. Mireille mused whether he was clad in that style on purpose. It was an old assassin's trick, to dress down and unconsciously lax the gaze of onlookers, urban camouflage whilst in plain view. It didn't always work, and a contract killer worth their salt would possess a level of concentration that effortlessly defeated the technique, but it did usually aid in eluding the less skilled authorities and in being forgotten by any potential witnesses. Mireille rarely embraced the practice, favouring a refined fashion sense emphasising a mix of solid colours over flat, lacklustre and dowdy clothes that provided only a small amount of benefit in return. That wasn't to say she abhorred black and grey in her wardrobe, but that employment of the shades were tempered by good taste.

Mireille hoped that her modish fashion sense would sooner or later rub off on Kirika… who unfortunately had none whatsoever. That was why Mireille picked out the girl's clothes for her and drilled what combinations of them made the best outfits… besides also furtively wanting her partner to model what she would look the loveliest in, a goal which happily coincided. Kirika didn't seem to know what to choose and consequently appeared to randomly pluck garments from the hangers, giving no regard to how… awful… they would look on her. The last item Mireille had let her select herself had been those pink shoes of hers. True, they were adorable on Kirika's delicate feet-which was why the blonde had purchased a new pair to replace the one lost during the girl's trip to the Manor-but they didn't really go with anything. Only their cuteness assuaged the irritation that threatened to arise whenever Mireille laid eyes on them, her devout sense of style's wails of objection muffled by the feelings of her heart. As such, Mireille believed it her duty to take Kirika under her experienced wing and guide her clueless 'pupil' in the art of being well dressed. She suspected she had a tough task on her hands.

Breffort nodded in greeting to Mireille as he joined her and Kirika outside the pyramid, the regular beat of his cane on the paving halted. His expression was hard, but no more than was common from the customarily austere man. Still, the Corsican assassin couldn't conceive that he was pleased with the latest developments on the Ishinomori front.

Mireille's face darkened to mirror Breffort's, her gaze becoming as cool as the air around them and as pure a blue as the sky above. It wasn't as if she was pleased with developments, either. Or with having to once again converse with one of Soldats' ilk.

"This makes a nice change from your office," Mireille commented condescendingly by way of welcome, placing her hands on her hips as she made a show of appraising the scenic palace walls that served as their backdrop. As her frosty eyes glided over the exquisite architecture, she idly wondered in which windows Breffort's 'guardian angels' roosted, totting high-powered rifles in their clutches. Of course, if Mireille was intent on killing him, there was not a hope in the world that the concealed snipers would be able to stop her. But making it out of the courtyard alive after the deed was done might be a tad tricky.

"It would not be intelligent for us to meet there more than once," Breffort said gruffly, ignoring the woman's disrespectful tone. He was probably used to it by now. "My colleagues are familiar with my place of business, and thus it is not guaranteed to be free of prying eyes. If they ever learn of our dealings, it would put me in a… difficult position."

"We can't have that," Mireille deadpanned, displaying as much concern as she felt.

Breffort stared at the waspish Corsican for a second, before merely grunting in response. It rankled Mireille that he was so impervious to her finessed barbs. It was like disparaging a rock.

"Come, let's take a walk," Breffort then proposed. He tapped the bottom of his cane against the side of his right black leather shoe. "This cold doesn't agree with my leg." He angled his body towards the museum wing to his rear, the section conversely facing the assassins. "I hear the Sully wing has a fine exhibition of ancient pre-classical Greek works. I trust that era will be to your-" His grey eyes flicked to Kirika for a second, bestowing her the same bland look he seemed to give everything, "-and your partner's liking."

"I'm sure it will be," Mireille replied evenly as she searched through Breffort's gloomy voice for any buried hint of sarcasm, weighing whether his last remark had been a subtle yet deliberate dig at her Sapphic predilection, and at the girl it was currently focused on. One portion of history the blonde *was* acquainted with was that of around sixth century B.C. regarding an isle in the Mediterranean, and the gifted poet who had been born there. And what that female poet had written of.

But after fastidiously scanning Breffort's words Mireille found nothing to indicate they held any scorn whatsoever, and honestly, she hadn't truly expected them to. She didn't think Breffort was the sort to be so contemptible as to mock her and Kirika's lifestyle choices. He was twin to a rock, after all. The woman was probably reading too much into it, letting her rancour for Soldats as a whole cause her to tar all of its members with the same vile brush… when there was in reality many assorted types of vile brushes of varying scales to tar them with.

Besides, she wasn't sure if Breffort was even aware of the romantic-or increasingly romantic, at any rate-nature of her relationship with Kirika. Yet, he had been present with the rest of Soldats' high council when the young women had shuffled awkwardly but victoriously out of the Manor together, their arms around each other's shoulders steadfastly supporting one another's tired and wounded bodies, the Corsican proudly publicising her decision to stand by her partner to the bitter end and beyond. Moreover, Breffort had taken advantage of Mireille's soft spot for Kirika before, so he had to have some grasp on the depth of her feelings for the petite girl. But past their prospective gainful use in his conflict against Kaede Ishinomori's wild behaviour, Mireille doubted the Soldats follower cared about her affection for Kirika. Thank goodness for small mercies, she sardonically supposed.

Breffort led the way around the fountains that surrounded the Louvre's pyramid and across courtyard Napoleon to the Sully wing, his hobbling pace forcing Mireille and Kirika to slow theirs to compensate, the necessity frustrating the blonde. She considered whether to spitefully insist that they talk outside in the courtyard, just to make Breffort uncomfortable. The painful distraction he would suffer as a consequence *could* give her an edge in the conversation, in the battle of wits, ahead. But Mireille understood that she was once again allowing her animosity for the man and the group he represented to turn her into a, quite frankly, nasty bitch. She should take a leaf out of Kirika's book-or maybe even Breffort's-and tackle annoyances with stoicism fortifying her nerves. Although, the woman normally did face life's challenges with an aloof front-Soldats merely had a tendency to incite her temper to flare dramatically. She had to strive to be better than that, to not let the odious international organisation defeat her in any manner at all, irrespective of how minor.

The somewhat long trek to the Sully wing of the Louvre was made in silence, Breffort shambling ahead of Mireille and Kirika with the young women flanking each other behind him. The Corsican contract killer could envision the Soldats official's snipers tracking their progress across the courtyard with their rifles, invisible bullseyes painted on her and her partner's heads and backs. It was with relief when Mireille and her unbearably lethargic company finally entered the shelter of the Sully wing, the blonde glad to shake off their hidden and dangerous watchers. But it was a short-lived reprieve. Breffort had to have more agents in position about the interior of the palace, or at the very least in this particular wing. He wouldn't have suggested that they 'take a walk' here unless he had adequate measures in place to protect his person, just in case Mireille suddenly opted to put a bullet or two in him. And who knows, maybe she might if what he had to discuss with her and Kirika didn't sit well with her.

Sometimes Mireille wondered why she hadn't pounced upon the chance to slay Breffort and all of Soldats' chief council with him when she and Kirika had stepped out of the Manor. Life may well have been considerably easier if she'd had. But then she and Kirika hadn't wanted anything more to do with the order-and still didn't, despite recent affairs-and murdering their top heads would have likely prohibited that, rousing the countless remaining followers to seek revenge once they had recovered from the panic of losing their leaders. And then the young women would probably have never been rid of Soldats, forever at unrestrained hostilities with the entire group. On second thoughts, life in all likelihood would have been considerably more difficult indeed if Mireille had chosen that vindictive route. Moreover, there was also the fact to consider that Mireille and Kirika had honestly been in no condition for more gun battles at the time. The Corsican had been confident they could have killed the councilmen with relative ease regardless, but she hadn't wanted to get into another shootout if they could avoid it. Kirika had been in bad shape in spite of her defiant bearing; her gunshot wound would have been potentially life threatening if left without treatment for too long. Hence, with her partner's wellbeing at stake-a partner who she had only just acknowledged her true, loving feelings for-and the undeniable craving to return to their old life together, Mireille's choice back then had been crystal clear. In hindsight, she didn't really regret her decision. Nevertheless, it was still nice to dream about all of Soldats' ruling body lying dead at her feet sometimes.

Mireille left her black, rectangular sunglasses where they were perched high on the bridge of her nose as she, Kirika, and Breffort walked at the same irritatingly slow gait down the antiquity laden corridors of the Louvre. The previous night's lengthy activities and therefore significantly shortened hours in bed had given rise to some acute bags under her additionally puffy, stinging and watery eyes, plus not to mention sore limbs and a moderately more intolerant disposition than usual. Generous coats of makeup had concealed the worst of the unwelcome dusky rings, but they were still mostly discernible to Mireille's chagrin, in conjunction with the tears that constantly brimmed her bloodshot blue eyes and the swollen capillaries around the orbs that seemed to exasperatingly accentuate the bags. So the solution had been obvious, and one she had employed before after many a long, late night assignment. Following the cosmetics care; eye drops to reduce the stinging sensation, the swelling, and the prominent veins in her gaze, and then a pair of trendy black sunglasses to finish off. Even if it hadn't been a misleadingly sunny day she would have still donned a pair. The blonde couldn't have ventured out in public with anything less. She did have standards to maintain.

Mireille was cognisant of the odd, mildly thoughtful look Kirika was casting in her direction as they walked, as if through staring at her something had just revealed itself to the girl. Whatever it was seemed to satisfy Kirika, and she turned her head away from Mireille, new understanding appearing to shine in her doe eyes.

Mireille shook her head a fraction, dismissing her partner's antics. She was quite accustomed to Kirika's occasionally peculiar behaviour by now, but what she wouldn't give to see inside that pretty little head of hers at times. From what she had gathered from working and living with her, Kirika could come up with some rather strange notions.

Magnificent Greek artefacts preserved from days of old passed by Mireille on both sides, but she hardly saw any of them. Her eyes were too busy darting warily around her, the woman's mind hypothesising where Breffort's bodyguards where secreting themselves now. There were a few other visitors to the museum drifting up and down the wide corridor, as well as security guards standing tall at their stations. Any one of them could be in Soldats employ; hiding in plain view. It was a tactic they favoured.

Finally, Breffort stopped and turned to regard at length the ruined remains of a pillar-like marble statue that loosely resembled a one-armed headless woman, the Soldats member's left arm arranged behind the small of his back while his other kept his cane perfectly upright. Mireille and Kirika stopped walking also, but neither spared so much as a glance at the statue-their eyes were on the man who had summoned them here in the first place.

"You and your partner were quite active last night," Breffort said at last, though his gaze remained on the museum piece. His words were addressed as always to Mireille and not to Kirika, as though he wasn't even conscious of the girl standing next to the blonde, like she was seen as a part of the Corsican. It didn't actually bother Mireille that her partner was excluded from their conversation, however. The idea of Breffort talking directly to Kirika was unsettling for some reason, as if by him doing so some unseen barrier would be violated. "But have naught to show for your efforts beyond the bags under your eyes."

Mireille's lips twitched and one of her eyebrows was stricken by a sudden tic, the woman irritated and abashed that her pains to disguise the fatigue showing in her eyes had been transparent to Breffort, and moreover to have her and Kirika's labours the previous night to be denigrated so. She reached up and readjusted her sunglasses on her nose in an endeavour to mask her discomfiture and give her time to get a hold of her growing indignation, the blonde clamping down on it before her standoffish veneer unravelled any further.

"However, your actions did free one of my better operatives from an increasingly insignificant post," Breffort went on as he turned away from the statue to face Mireille and Kirika, either ignorant of or indifferent to the Corsican's internal struggle with her escalating resentment. "I believe I owe you a debt of gratitude for sparing him where others died."

"'Don't shoot the messenger'," Mireille quipped smoothly, although without emotion. Breffort had to be referring to Jacques, the man she and Kirika had encountered in Millet's strip club. It was irrefutable who he worked for, now.

Breffort nodded slightly in thanks. "Judging from what I've heard, you acted on my message," he then said. He heaved a sigh and looked away briefly, before affixing Mireille with a pitiless grey gaze. "But you failed," he stated with finality. "Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu are now on a plane halfway back to Japan and the protection of Kaede Ishinomori's forces. It will no longer be as easy to strike at them."

"They've left France?" Mireille said, taken aback. She frowned hard, glowering at the floor. She guessed the false Noir had got what they came to Paris for; namely Langonel's Manuscript. This made matters a great deal more complicated, and they hadn't exactly been straightforward to start with.

"Yes, and with Langonel's Manuscript in their possession. Evidently it was their reason for being here," Breffort confirmed, as if he was tracing the blonde's train of thought. "And so…."

The high-ranking Soldats official slid his free hand inside his suit jacket, causing him to obtain dual, firm, guarded looks from Mireille and Kirika, their eyes simultaneously and abruptly snapping to him in a united instant. But once his hand reappeared, there wasn't a weapon held in it but a bright red packet, one he brandished before the assassins.

Mireille's frown deepened and became one of anger rather than worry as she spied the white coloured logo on a lower corner of the envelope, a logo she recognised as an international airline's. So *that* was Breffort's game.

"You planned this from the start, didn't you?" Mireille accused the loathsome Soldats member hotly through gritted teeth belonging to a sickened sneer, her battle to control her ire towards him and his group all but lost. "For us to go over there and deal with Kaede-with *everything!*-for you! For Soldats!" The blonde shook her head in disgust, her eyes boring into Breffort through her sunglasses' shade.

"Well, I'll tell you now we'll have none of it!" Mireille continued to hiss, having retained just enough of her composure to remember to keep her voice lowered. Perhaps this was the incentive Breffort had had for selecting to convene at a museum; because he knew she would be furious at his scheme. The repercussions of killing Ryosuke and Vincent in Japan, whilst the men were backed by Kaede's growing empire, would be considerably thornier than if they had been taken out isolated and alone in Paris. The pair knew that the 'true Noir' sought their lives, and had probably at least informed Kaede of that fact. Thus if they were to be murdered suddenly in Japan, Mireille and Kirika would be the first to be considered as the culprits. Maybe the blame for the eventual assassinations could be pinned on Soldats, but it was unlikely now with the affirmed death sentence looming over Ryosuke and Vincent's heads. What's more, Kaede would not let the slaying of her older brother go unpunished, perhaps even forcing the young women responsible to kill her, too. Which was presumably exactly what Breffort had planned.

"You misunderstand," Breffort said, clearly unfazed in the face of the Corsican's outrage. "This is merely a natural progression. Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu are still alive, but are now heading home for Yokohama, Japan. Therefore you must go there as well to finish your task. I have never known you to desert an assignment you have already agreed to undertake."

Mireille seethed with impotent fury, fantasising herself whipping out her gun from under her coat and shooting Breffort in the chest, straight through the airline tickets he held aloft, but frustratingly aware that it would stay a fantasy. The Soldats official was practically untouchable, save if she wanted herself and Kirika to be on the run for the rest of their lives. And he was correct; she'd never abandoned an assignment before. But she had agreed to his under fictitious pretences; her dogma of acceptable conduct didn't apply here.

"And it also doubles as a means of protection," Breffort expounded, wagging the tickets in his hand a tad. "The property Ishinomori and Hsu raided-and which you pursued them to-was owned by one Albert Laroque of Soldats. You and your partner killed some of his men, and were sighted at the scene by those who survived."

"Unavoidable," Mireille spat vehemently yet vainly, already realising where this was going.

"True, but it is perceived that you and your partner have stirred completely from your self-imposed torpor now, having committed an act of unbridled hostility against Soldats," Breffort clarified. "It is of the council's opinion that you have declared yourselves a full enemy to them, and so have been marked as such. It is only a matter of time before they take decisive action against you both."

"And I'm sure you didn't say a thing to dissuade them, to set them straight," Mireille snarled.

"That would risk exposing our alliance," Breffort said. "Testimony came from Laroque himself, a member of some standing among us. I would have needed proof to discredit his beliefs regarding the extent of your involvement against him, and I have none bar our forbidden association."

Of course. Breffort wouldn't put his own head on the chopping block when there was already two there-specifically Mireille's and Kirika's. Cunning and cowardly, cunning and cowardly. The qualities of Soldats.

"Henceforth, it isn't safe in Paris for either of you anymore," Breffort warned. "Indeed, some on the council feel you and your partner may even have sided with Ishinomori, which ranks you both as possibly a greater menace than you were before as purely Noir; unruly blades but solo ones."

"And you want to send us to Japan?" Mireille exclaimed incredulously, her voice somehow still at a subdued pitch. "To the den of our alleged collaborator?"

"It is the safest, wisest course of action," Breffort attempted to rationalise. "You must leave the country for your own safety, and to prove yourselves as solitary parties in this dispute. To finish what you have begun. Thus-" He gestured with the tickets in his hand again.

"It all sounds so… plausible… so… reasonable," Mireille said, her tone cold, her boiling temper brought down to a low simmer in the face of the Soldats follower's believable vindications. But real or not, they all served one common purpose; for Mireille-and by association Kirika-to do what Breffort wanted. How calculating of him. How *despicable* of him. "But this is a performance that I've been exposed to before," she condemned tartly. "The last time we met, you convinced me that Ryosuke and Vincent were poised to be our rivals, when in reality they were scarcely aware of the existence of Noir at all!"

"As before, I simply present the solid facts and my own verdicts on them," Breffort straightforwardly avowed. "Nothing more. It has always been your liberty to decide how to act on the information I provide."

Mireille said nothing in reply, merely giving him a sullen scowl. She was agonisingly aware that he was right. Her choices had always been her own from the start; indeed, the woman had actually taken pride that Breffort didn't dictate her actions, his manipulation of her through her feelings for Kirika notwithstanding. But hearing the Soldats official state that fundamentally it was Mireille's own fault for the mess she had dropped herself and her partner into, even though she had previously accepted that truth, made her feel terrible all over again, the unremitting guilt that was a lead weight inside her heart refreshed and compounded to profound potency. It additionally made the assassin feel angry; angry at Breffort for reminding her of her failure, angry at herself for failing in the first place, and angry at her weak heart for propagating that failure.

"Besides, with their attainment of Langonel's Manuscript, I assumed Ishinomori and Hsu's ambition to become the true Noir unmistakable," Breffort went on unhelpfully, Mireille already having taken that into account. It hadn't reduced her guilt in the slightest.

Breffort cleared his throat, and then fastened a stern stare upon Mireille's now somewhat disconsolate form, the woman's shoulders slumped and her head dipped, wilted blonde tresses falling past a face where bleakness and bitterness warred. "The flight to Japan departs tomorrow afternoon, which offers you some leeway to make your decision," the man announced, once more plying the airline tickets in his left hand. "But stay or go; the choice is yours, Mireille Bouquet."

Mireille looked up, favouring Breffort with a baleful glare over the top of her sunglasses, her dark-smudged, swollen and bloodshot eyes giving the look an especially hellish quality. She then raised her head and pushed her glasses higher on her nose, before stepping decisively forwards, snatching the tickets belligerently from his grasp. Not this time. The choice would not be Mireille's this time. Her guilt was enough as it was. No, she planned to lay the whole choice on how to proceed on Kirika's slim, unsuspecting lap. It was a momentous decision, with who knew how many dire ramifications awaiting them on either path, and the blonde just couldn't make it herself. Her last major decision had led to such unmitigated disasters that she and her partner were still suffering from their ill affects, one being having to decide whether to embark upon a trip to Japan and face Kaede's forces, or to remain in Paris and face Soldats' forces. No, this time Mireille would make absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did what Kirika wished to do. Perhaps it was gutless, a cowardly attempt to escape blaming herself again, and would invoke its own brand of guilt afterwards anyway, but regardless she had to ensure her partner abided by whatever they did, and actually declared it out loud. She didn't want a choice she made harming Kirika or their relationship again. However, when Mireille had accepted the tickets, she couldn't help feeling that they had already settled on one.

"A last word of warning for if you opt to follow Ishinomori and Hsu," Breffort said as Mireille testily stashed the airline tickets inside her coat. "Laroque was not best pleased by the invasion of his home, and even less by the theft of one of his most prized articles of literature. To my peers, Langonel's Manuscript is a relic; unimportant, unused-a mere part of our past long dead. While we do not like that it will be in Kaede Ishinomori's hands, we can tolerate it. For now. But it is different for Laroque. I hear he intends to send some of his men to Japan after Ishinomori and Hsu to retrieve it, men who will work in parallel to my own operatives presently stationed there for the conflict with the Ishinomori empire. You may or may not encounter them, but if you do take note that they will not view you and your partner as a friendly faction."

"We'll dispense the same treatment to them," Mireille replied coolly.

Breffort just nodded, and then took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. "Whether you and your partner elect to go or not, I don't imagine we will meet again for some time," he prophesised.

"Best news I've heard all day," Mireille said venomously, but with not as much malice as she could usually muster for one of Soldats' caste. Her mind was elsewhere.

Breffort smirked faintly, and regarded the woman silently for a few seconds. "Good luck," he finally said in what could be dubbed an encouraging tone for him. "Despite what you may think, I wish you no ill will."

Mireille spared him one last, mordant, sidelong glance, and then wordlessly walked past him and down the corridor with Kirika at her clicking heels, leaving behind Breffort standing where he was, watching them depart. But if they would depart France… that was a mystery that Mireille intended her partner alone could shed light on.

* * *

Kirika stared solemnly at the plane tickets lying in the middle of the table, their garishly coloured wrappings stark contrast against the paler, more muted surface, to the extent that the young assassin believed the packet might sear a hole right through it. The cup and saucer in front of her faired no better, as did the rest of the pastel crockery atop the table; no contest against the bright, ominous shade. The envelope was a brash interloper in an otherwise calm, subdued environment, its mere presence an affront. It was painted a vivid red-the colour of warning, the colour of blood, promising the latter ahead if the former was not heeded. The tickets' destination didn't matter; regardless of where in the world they led, Kirika and Mireille would ultimately still arrive at the same place; a place of violence and murder, a place where darkness reigned and peace was foreign.

But there was still a choice, the warning yet blazing, incessantly straining to get its urgent point across, to convince that to use these tickets was to be burned by them. The future still remained to be seen. A future Kirika had to decide.

The rays of the setting sun filtered weakly through the apartment's windows, the light dying out to make way for the imminent advent of night, its strength against the dark waning, failing as it did every day, and in its demise taking with it the dream that today could have been the one, the day when Kirika's hope of peace became permanent reality. Truly, Kirika had dared hope that maybe, just maybe, the appointment with Breffort signified the end of the killing, that she was at long last catching up to the spectacular horizon where her peaceful dream existed, where all dreams of sinners existed, tantalisingly visible but far out of reach. She knew she shouldn't have indulged in such wishful thinking, but alas her will had not been strong enough, her yearning for a peaceful life too overpowering. And now she was suffering from that familiar brand of disappointment again, afflicted by that empty, desolate feeling that numbed her heart and stunted her spirits, shrinking what little hope remained inside her until despair took its place.

"We don't have to," Mireille tempted softly, sitting across from Kirika at the other side of the table, her steaming cup of tea poised near her lips in a hand while the girl's sat untouched. "We can just stay here. Breffort belongs to Soldats, and you know none who do can be trusted. He was probably spinning another of his lies." The woman's voice was gentle, benevolent, sweetly whispering the things Kirika wanted to hear. To believe. Falsehoods, all of them. And they both knew it.

Kirika lifted her head slightly to look at Mireille. She was smiling pleasantly at her, tenderly, contentedly. But it too was a falsehood, if a benign one. The vanishing sun was at the blonde's back, its wan rays scattering dusky patches across her face, her smile tinged in dark shadow, the woman's genuine sentiments hinted at. It was obviously forced, Mireille feeling the burden as much as Kirika was. Soldats was always a sensitive subject with the blonde, provoking uncharacteristically intense emotions from her. Kirika remembered how her partner had been like talking to Breffort-angry, frustrated, and dejected. She didn't enjoy seeing her in any of those conditions, and had felt a longing to reach out to Mireille during the blonde's various tirades, to calm her, support her, comfort her. It had been a longing she had not acted on, however. Something had kept her back; kept her arms limply by her sides. Kirika simply didn't feel… comfortable… touching Mireille without the woman's express consent. Only if Mireille made physical contact with her did she consider permission had been given for her to do likewise, otherwise she felt she was disrespectfully invading her partner's personal space and could possibly incur her disapproval or even her anger as a consequence. In bed was the exception though, with Kirika's instinctive need to wrap herself around Mireille's body learnt to be put up with by the woman, and now sometimes even returned in kind, the blonde's sneaky petting and this morning's atypical candid caresses coming to mind.

Kirika's sober gaze was drawn back down to the tickets, as if her eyes could not escape its flame-like lure. The decision what to do was hers, she knew. Mireille hadn't directly admitted it, but neither had she spoke plainly of their options one way or another. It was strange; normally she took the initiative in issues such as these, utilising her superior judgement to make the best decision for the both of them. But this time Mireille had stayed silent on the matter, wordlessly deferring responsibility to Kirika. The girl wondered why, but believed it wiser not to ask and ruin her partner's unvoiced renouncement. She sincerely hoped this wouldn't become the norm, however. Kirika didn't like this position of authority. It would have been much easier for her if Mireille had decided on what to do, and she had been left to simply follow her partner's lead as she always did. Now, Mireille was unfortunately not affording her that luxury.

Kirika took a breath, and then thought about what they should do. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to rip up those offending tickets and for her and the woman she loved to stay are. To remain at home and face whatever may come. They would live through Soldats' backlash; Kirika would not fail in her duty to protect Mireille, and she herself would not fall, not while that duty persisted. It was a cycle that ensured lasting survival… but that was all. No matter how much Kirika wanted to stay here in this Paris apartment with Mireille, awaiting the realisation of her serene dream, she was aware it would be a life forever tarnished. Not by the violence or by the darkness in their lives, but because of the other choice not taken.

Ryosuke and Vincent, the aspirant Noir-they had seen Kirika and Mireille's faces, and were aware that the young women had once been what they apparently sought to be. And Kirika knew that Mireille would never let it go. Ryosuke and Vincent were loose ends that the woman must tie; it was the kind of person she was. She would hunt them to the ends of the Earth if she had to. Nevertheless, Mireille would permit the men to run free if Kirika gave the word, if she made that decision. But it would result in a taint contaminating their lives, a taint that wouldn't be washed away until Mireille and seen that the unfinished business was resolved. Kirika had had a glimpse today of what life would be like if she choose to stay in Paris. Following the conclusion of their meeting with Breffort, she and Mireille had wandered the halls of the Louvre palace as promised, but what should have had been a fun event examining ancient artefacts and artworks had been spoiled by the knowledge of what awaited them when they returned home. Mireille had put on a compelling front, explaining assorted pieces avidly and with many smiles, yet there had always been a distance about her, as if only a part of her mind was devoted to her task, the other venturing on darker things. As a result, Kirika had become noticeably downcast, not so adept at wearing masks and pretending she was feeling something she wasn't.

Listless wanderings, a masquerade of contentment-that was what lay down one path. A life of make-believe, of self-delusions. Kirika couldn't live like that, and she was sure Mireille didn't want to. If she selected that route, her and her partner's relationship would slowly decay as Mireille inexorably dwelled on those untied loose ends and Kirika became more and more depressed by the woman's detachment. The darkhaired girl didn't want to think about what would happen next, but couldn't keep from envisaging upsetting scenarios. Thoughts of an aggravated Mireille secretly blaming her for their dissatisfaction floated through her mind, thoughts of the woman not loving her anymore, abandoning her, hating her. Maybe if Kirika travelled along this path she wouldn't survive after all.

So there was only one option. Perhaps there always had only been one. That particular path was swathed in darkness, guaranteed to be soiled with more spilt blood. But it also contained hope. Hope that one day it would all be over, that it would lead to greater fulfilment, that one day Kirika would look back and see this sacrifice, this hardship, as something that had been worth enduring so that her dream of a peaceful life had a chance to be captured on that blue horizon. That the fresh black stains on her hands had been worth it, badges of merit almost, the fresh sins not in vain. But rest assured it wasn't a decision made only for herself; it was a decision she made for Mireille too, maybe even more so, a decision she suspected the blonde wanted-needed-to hear. Kirika wished for Mireille to be able to look back also, and with satisfaction in her heart that everything was over with, *totally* over with, not a thing left behind that could possibly return to fetter their existence with another bout of darkness.

[There is nothing grand that can be achieved without sacrifice. You must strive for it. Earn it through honest toil. Fight for it. Do no matter what to accomplish it. *That* is what separates the strong from the weak, the blissful from the merely content.]

Kirika steeled herself, ready for that fight, her eyes sober no more. She wouldn't cower in Paris. She and Mireille would journey down that other, arguably darker route to its very end, and nothing would deter them, nothing would slow them. Kirika swore anew that the woman she loved would survive to its last arduous step and past it onto calmer, easier ones, that those souls who tried to hurt Mireille, rightly deserving death, would be granted it at her keen reckoning.

Kirika reached across to the centre of the table, and placed her fingertips on the airline tickets. They were warm beneath her touch, still radiating caution supplied earlier by the heat of the dimming sunlight. She ignored it. The sun had already lost its battle, dead, its corpse having melted into the horizon. The room was now steeped in conquering darkness offset by only a meagre glimmer of powerless moonlight. Kirika's eyes gleamed more ebon in the newborn shadows than brown; rather dull, lacklustre. But determined all the same.

She looked up at Mireille, her fingers remaining on the tickets as she met her partner's blue gaze that was trying hard not to be melancholy. The woman's eyes were the same brilliant shade as tomorrow's horizon where Kirika's dream resided, still stunning in the pallid moonlight. The young assassin could almost perceive that horizon in their bottomless depths, as if it was actually hidden somewhere in Mireille's lovely eyes.

"Let's go," Kirika said in a steady voice.

Mireille uttered nothing in answer, instead averting her gaze and taking a drink of her tea, the porcelain cup disguising her abruptly fallen smile.

* * *

Later that night, nestled contently against Mireille in bed, Kirika had a dream. She dreamt she was standing on a dirt road with a huge barren wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see as her backdrop, craggy mountains scraping the clear blue skies on the horizon ahead. Unbelievably, lush fields bursting with grapevines were spread out before her on either side of the road. Their greenery was the only notable presence of plant life greater than the occasional tree and patch of grass in the desolate environment, somehow flourishing in the inhospitable conditions where other vegetation had no doubt withered and died. Bunches of plump purple grapes hung heavily from the vines, their succulence ready to be harvested and pounded into wine.

Kirika blinked, wondering why she was so sure that was the grapes' purpose, then realised that this was a place she knew, had been to before. Her throat dried suddenly, and apprehension gripped her. She focused her eyes beyond the vineyard, to the shattered remnants of a chateau at the end of the trail, to ruins even more ancient strewn around it. To a place forgotten by time.

Unbidden, her legs started to move, taking her closer to that awful place. Kirika panted in rising fear as she looked anxiously down at the bare limbs that were suddenly not her own, and endeavoured to still them with her hands. But to her horror her arms had been stricken by the same affliction as her legs, disobeying her mental commands and not reacting past the barest jerk.

Kirika's head turned frantically this way and that as she looked around with mounting desperation for help, an escape, *anything* to halt her advance down the dirt trail. But there was no one tending the fields, no one on the rest of the path behind her, no one else but her anywhere in this wilderness. Except for one person. One person who waited ahead on the doorstep of the Manor. One person Kirika implicitly knew would not aid her in her plight.

Kirika breached the grapevines and left them behind as she walked progressively onwards, her possessed legs stopping only when she was right at the foot of the stairs leading to the entrance of the Manor. Her head hurt, a deaden stabbing at its core, and her mouth opened noiselessly in pained protest. But her throbbing head was lifted irrespective of her woe and of her desire to do the opposite, and with blurry eyes the girl took in the person who rose sedately above her. Patiently waiting.

It was a woman, taller than Kirika, with defined features more handsome than beautiful, but captivating all the same. Her light brown hair was long and braided in a single thick yet loose plait, and held together by a dark blue ribbon tied in a neat bow. Her clothes were outdated but elegant, a robe and a cloak, white and purple tones, and clearly ceremonial, as if she was a priestess of some kind. But it was her eyes that drew Kirika. Her light lilac eyes that were deceptively kind, tender, teeming with compassion. But Kirika knew better. For she knew this woman. She had killed her.

Altena, hands enfolded together placidly in front of her, smiled down at the panicked girl in that gentle, considerate fashion of hers, but it did nothing to quell Kirika's rapidly beating heart. The devout Soldats follower's lips then parted and formed words, but none came forth from her mouth. Instead they seemed to emanate from all around Kirika, a soft lilting voice that filled her head, not a crevice untouched. A whisper in her mind.

[Welcome home.]

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

I had to have Altena in this fanfic somehow, even if it isn't really her. She was just so hot! …Why is everybody looking at me like that? She was! I liked her hair and her eyes. And super-deformed Altena is so kawaii! ^_^

FYI: Mireille's tea preferences were based on my girlfriend's.


	16. Looking Beyond The Horizon

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The sixteenth chapter.

**In light of new information, the locations of Kirika's house and school have been changed to Kawasaki. The Ishinomori birthplaces and the location of their headquarters have been changed to Yokohama mainly for the sake of a smoother plot. All chapters have been revised to reflect this change. It's nothing too major; basically, all references to Kyoto have been replaced with references to Yokohama. Thanks to Chadwick for assisting me with this issue! ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 16 - Looking Beyond The Horizon

Breffort paused just outside the door; a solid hulk of oak with simple yet regal designs hailing from the old-world carved directly into the mass of wood; and adjusted the broad knot of his slate-grey necktie at his throat. It was an unnecessary gesture; one that he was reluctantly aware was birthed out of a desire to linger in the dimly lit antechamber for a few moments longer. And out of an irrational sense that his tie was coming dangerously close to throttling him.

It was always the same when he stood in front of this door, stood wearing these clothes. The forest green suit jacket felt outlandish on him, constricting, its straight cut stiff collar prickling his neck. The accompanying white shirt was no improvement, its collar a tight band around his throat. Perhaps it was the shirt's collar that was responsible for the sensation of having a restricted windpipe. Indeed, his sedate necktie was the only part of his dress that reflected who he really was.

The rest were clothes of an antiquated cut, trappings from the past, but the formal and expected attire for one such as he. Breffort always tried to think of them as the equivalent of ceremonial robes merely signifying his station, a station that led beyond that door, and nothing more. But the attire also signified the aspect of that station he despised above all. Despised above all, yet which was obligatory nonetheless, irrespective of how much and how often he endeavoured to shirk it. His absence had been too long as it was, until a few months prior at any rate, and besides, he needed to be here in person for this. There were some things that couldn't be done unless face-to-face with those involved, or rather, *shouldn't* be done. Things where observing facial expression and body language closely were key factors vital to base further planning on, which would then lead to eventual success. And continued survival.

Smothering his discomfort with a force of will keen at the struggle against emotion, Breffort opened the door he faced without further hesitation and stepped into the room it protected, his expression and hobbled gait exhibiting all the impassiveness and nonchalance expected-nay, required-of a member of Soldats' chief ruling council. He entered without knocking, but the four middle-aged men gathered in the sitting room were not offended nor caught off guard by his appearance, or if they were, they didn't show it save for a subtle shifting of heads and eyes to regard him. They, like Breffort, were of the same breed. Furthermore, his arrival had been expected. His tardiness on the other hand, was assumed.

It was here in this room where all the strings of all the puppets eventually ended, the reins of a bridled world, reins held and steered by the men seated in a semicircle around the blazing fireplace set into the right-hand wall. The men beyond the looking glass, the puppet-masters behind the curtain. Countless people's fates had been decided in this room; the destiny of nations; the future of the globe. Breffort closed the door and moved to take his place among those who controlled the workings of the world from the shadows.

He was, as usual when he did grace the council with his presence, the last member to arrive. His peers wordlessly and emotionlessly watched him settle into the only remaining empty armchair by the fire, the second from the left-his chair. There had been a long stretch when Breffort's chair had been missing from the arc, his deliberate and lengthy non-attendance of council meetings prompting his fellows to eventually remove it outright. It wasn't until shortly after the turmoil with Ishinomori arose when he had he at last returned to take part in the occasional conference… although his loathing of them still endured. His being here this evening, like on the previous evenings he had elected to join his cohorts, was purely out of a strategic need to be. If he could have avoided it, he most certainly would have.

Instead of sitting about in a gloomy, secluded room wasting valuable time discussing affairs that did not need to be discussed in person, or in many cases at all by Soldats' ruling council, he preferred to take a more active role in the society he secretly influenced; to actually *be* in the thick of those affairs. He believed his more direct involvement made him a better adjudicator of how those affairs should properly be handled, leagues better than his fellow councilmen who had distanced themselves too greatly from the people they clandestinely governed and the world they surreptitiously moulded. For too long had Breffort's contemporaries isolated themselves by restricting their participation in Soldats concerns to council assemblies, pulling the marionettes' strings from as far away as they could, relying on the organisation's network of underlings' reports to give them a semblance of a view of the world outside their cushioned mansions and estates. Breffort knew none were like him; none ventured from their lofty thrones on the uppermost echelons of Soldats hierarchy to scrutinise the ever-changing currents of civilisation. A mistake. As a result of their segregation they all looked to Breffort when the council needed representation in the world; he was the face of Soldats' nobility, posing as their avatar, relaying their commands to those arrayed below-it was the reason why they tolerated his frequent absence from meetings, or at least, did not outwardly call him down on them.

Breffort did not balk at having been saddled with such a role; indeed, in his opinion it was a favourable position to be in, perhaps even the most ideal. In the eyes of his and the council's subordinates it was Breffort they considered to be leader of Soldats; the council themselves were but a faceless, mysterious group to them that some circulating rumours proclaimed did not even really exist. And the belief that Breffort single-handedly presided over Soldats, while not quite completely erroneous, brought respect and power-respect and power Breffort gladly accepted as his due right.

The cost of this notoriety and authority wasn't him becoming a lackey to his peers on the council, however. Far from it. He had a seat and thus was their equal, or so was the general conception. But whatever the rest of the council thought, Breffort knew he surpassed them. He was the architect of Soldats plots, the coordinator of the smoke and mirrors. All the intelligence from all of Soldats' sources eventually found its way to him, flowing between the myriad of nodes placed across the Earth until reaching his, the pinnacle of the erratic web-like pyramid; intelligence from the organisation's innumerable agents, and intelligence from the council itself. He was privy to all, ignorant of nothing. His position saw to that. It was Breffort who *truly* had the power of Soldats at his fingertips, and through it, manipulated the world at his whim. Let his colleagues think they had him at their beck and call, equals or not. It did not matter. He knew his place, knew it well, and they could not compete.

Still, it was with awkwardness that Breffort sank into the dark upholstery of the vacant armchair, awkwardness not triggered by the twinges running up his right leg from his old injury. The chair didn't fit any better than the clothes he was duty-bound to wear.

Breffort propped his cane against an arm of the chair, and made as if he was relaxing back against its cushions although the stiffness never left his shoulders, the tension never left his throat. But putting on airs of indifference was a must in his current company; to do otherwise would cause them to suspect something was bothering him; that perhaps he had something to hide. Breffort wore stoicism like it was a steel helm, here. Equals they may deem each other as, but none had earned this standing in Soldats through an open face and loose tongue.

The fireplace Breffort and the other four men where seated around was huge, eclipsing the rest of the windowless room's features, and was the sole font of illumination. Bright flames billowed wildly in the hearth behind a row of cast-iron bars capped with spear-points as if furious at being caged, the fire's rage a palpable heat against Breffort's face. The flickering flames painted capering shadows on the walls, the silhouettes of cavorting heathens worshiping some pagan god. The breaks in the dancers' steps revealed the backdrop they gambolled in front of, shaded in an orange hue; rosewood wall panels adorned with relics from an age long past, from an age drenched in darkness. A complete suit of full plate armour, its individual pieces fixed together by near invisible pins, stood erect against one portion of wall, halberd held upright in one heavy gauntlet. Other leftovers of the medieval era joined it, including a broad assortment of martial blades mounted on the walls, blades crafted in different regions all over the globe. Claymores, long swords, scimitars, cutlasses; the list was wide-ranging. They gleamed in the firelight, ancient metal polished until it was burnished as in days of old, time-blunted edges re-sharpened to a razor's precision. Coat-of-arms from several forgotten bloodlines sometimes accompanied the blades, kite shields with faded decorations hinting at twinkling stars and springing lions flanked by slanted rapiers or fastened atop crossed broadswords.

Trophies of the hunt made their home among the memories of archaic warfare also, the heads of game animals affixed to wooden plaques-deer, bears, even a moose. But like with the artefacts collected from the Dark Ages, they were not what drew a discerning eye.

A framed tapestry hung above the fireplace, its once dyed embroidery long since faded to earth tones with age, but the scene it depicted still persisted, as did the legend it was based on despite the council's ongoing efforts to quash the decreed 'outdated' concept. Two young women faced each other on bended knee; the right of long, sinuous tresses like deep silken waves down her back, her partner of short, capricious locks cut to the nape of her neck. Garlands wreathed the crowns of their heads, white blossoms in the long hair of one, a circle of green leaves in the short hair of the other. The women were clad in naught but a flowing robe that bared them to the waist, the loose draping imperilling more skin to be exposed, yet it was not their unsullied forms that stirred allure. Swords the women clasped in their hands, twin edges held flawlessly straight and true towards the heavens, the taller woman on the right with a blade of gold and the shorter on the left with one of silver, the colours still unmistakable in spite of the fabric's wear. They were the maidens who had reigned over Death more than a thousand years ago, the first pair of Black Hands-the first Noir.

The pure maidens were the accepted universal symbol of Soldats, even today, although it wasn't until recently that the notion of Noir had been revived and a new generation of young female assassins had donned the grim but prestigious mantle. It was of the council's opinion that the idea of two people alone cleansing the Earth of the taint of darkness was ludicrous in this modern day and age. The blood of Soldats had spread all but to the most remote places in the world; there was virtually nowhere that Soldats could now no longer touch and therefore there was no need of the Black Hands. Or so was the excuse that the council had given for letting dust amass on the tradition. Breffort believed differently, and on more than one occasion had tactfully attempted to sway the council into accepting at least Bouquet-half of the current embodiment of Noir-into their fold, however his view matched his colleagues' regarding the ritual of Le Grand Retour itself. The restoration of Noir did not need to be tied together with the return to the old ways. A pair of insurmountable assassins *was* useful in this era, and could mesh agreeably with the present makeup of Soldats. But Breffort knew the rest of the council feared Noir, as well. They feared the power they would be granted if acknowledged as the Eternal Darkness whilst part of Soldats. Exiled, Noir remained an inspiration of dread, but at least they enjoyed no dominion over the organisation's swollen ranks.

Moreover, there was the disquieting issue of the Kind Mother. A third figure was sown into the tapestry, a noticeably older woman than the two maidens, standing with a veneer of benevolence over the pair. Clothed in an enveloping brown robe, its degree of modesty highlighting the maidens' partial state of undress, with a cowl closely framing her benign countenance, there was little doubt that she presided over the young women kneeling before her. Compassionate she appeared to be, and perhaps the original Kind Mother, the one whom had purportedly established the first Black Hands, sincerely had been, but Breffort knew as fact that not all of the women who had served as caretakers for Noir were of humane heart. Altena had been one such Kind Mother, although officially she had never actually been honoured with the title. Breffort had known Altena only by reputation and had seen her merely from afar, but even then he could detect the light of wicked ambition in her eyes beneath her façade of maternal concern. The council had feared her perhaps even more than the Eternal Darkness itself. After all, it is the Kind Mother who, as a rule, initially places the harness upon Noir and has the prerogative to direct their blades as she pleases. After Altena, the council would never permit another Kind Mother to draw breath. But whether or not their feelings for Noir, namely Bouquet and her young partner, ran the same….

Breffort studied the men assembled around him, dressed similarly to him in fully buttoned, stiff collared, green suit jackets, though he produced no outward show of doing so. Guarded was his grey gaze; circumspect was its movements. Some sat slouched in their armchairs, giving all the appearance of a laid-back disposition, while others sat poised as if in the highest royal court, straight-backed with chin raised. They came from different backgrounds, had different mannerisms, but all four councilmen had essentially the same natures. Natures that drove them to reign over others, natures that boasted the right spark of command and fortitude that enabled them to realise what they sought. Breffort supposed he was not too unlike them in that respect.

In any other set of circumstances where these individuals encountered one another, a clash of personalities, of wills, would have inevitably erupted like a sudden artic storm, cold calculated scheming to topple the man next to them hidden behind every stare. But all gathered here were regarded as having equal footing in Soldats, irrespective of one's actual current standing. Power waxed and waned among the council members like in any board of directors, influence always swelling and shrinking reminiscent of the tides, and for that reason no one ever chanced abusing their periodically improved pre-eminence in an effort to outstrip their fellow councilmen. The ones who had succumbed to the temptation were already long departed from the council, and from the living world. 'Those at the top have the longest to fall, and land the hardest'. Words neither Breffort nor the men around him forgot.

"I am heartened to see that your absence from our company was a short one this time. These are yet turbulent times, and this committee values your voice amongst us."

Breffort said nothing in response, choosing to simply stare expressionlessly into the crackling fire. In addition to having a chair on the Soldats council and acting as its representative, he was its primary advisor. His close personal involvement in the world's affairs apparently qualified him for the task, and hence his opinion carried great weight within this sitting room, and to the ears of the four men occupying it. And they believed him their equal. A preposterous notion when given even the slightest intelligent thought. They were like lambs begging to be shepherded, and they looked to Breffort to be the shepherd. If Breffort were so inclined he could lead them all to the slaughter, oblivious even as the knife took their throats. They were fortunate that he was content with the current arrangement; no wise sayings suggesting caution would have stayed his hand if not.

The man who had spoken sat in the armchair next to Breffort's, at the apex of the arc around the fireplace, and it could be said his position was an accurate depiction of his present repute. His hair was blonde, the colour of hay, and cropped short into almost unruly locks, as if he had just climbed out of bed and neglected brushing them into some semblance of order. A large silver ring circled the third finger of his left hand, shimmering in the frolicking flames trapped in the fireplace, the light caressing the profiles of two young women facing away from each other raised in the centre of the ring. All one had to do was glance at the tapestry above the hearth to identify the renowned pair. Bordering the likenesses of the original Noir on either side was a coat-of-arms much like the ones on display around the room, imprinted on a miniature kite shield worked into the metal. Allegedly they were the family crests of the wearer's mother and father, whose bloodlines-and in turn, the wearer's by association-reached as far back as to the century when the earliest incarnation of Noir was bestowed the swords they would later rout armies with from the first Kind Mother. Supposedly the councilman's ancestors had even been in attendance to witness the deed, but Breffort found that unlikely. He had heard that in Langonel's Manuscript the event had been documented, and it was apparently written there that no one but the two maidens and the Kind Mother had been present in the cavern underneath Langonel Monastery-the latter's remains lying on the same land as the Manor today-at the time of the conferment. Nevertheless, the mere implication had awarded the council member a great deal of prestige and respect, and the ring was a constant reminder of his 'notable' heritage… and the esteem it conveyed.

"The offer has been made," Breffort announced to the room before the blonde councilman could speak again. It was what he and the rest of the council wanted to hear about anyway. Breffort had spared them the trouble of subtly urging him to speak on the matter, which they would have resorted to eventually. "Noir will go to Japan."

Silence reigned once Breffort closed his mouth, the other four men quiet as they turned over the information in their minds again and again, no doubt ruminating on how this development would play out in the future, and how it would affect other, related, affairs.

A man across from Breffort, glasses on his nose and with his long brown hair tied in a ponytail that hung over one shoulder, frowned as he stared at Breffort. Several fingers of his steepled hands were ornamented with plain gold and silver bands that shone dully in the firelight, but as to their purpose or significance, Breffort couldn't fathom. "They accepted, then?" he inquired, the skepticism clear in his voice.

"No," Breffort said. "But they will go."

"How can you be so sure?" the man beside Breffort's bespectacled colleague piped up. He wore his black hair even shorter than the councilman at the head of the semi-circle, and a neatly trimmed beard covered his chin, as if he had dipped it in soot. "The memory of Noir stepping out of the Manor is still fresh in my mind. Corsica's Daughter did not come across as the most… amenable woman. She may have bent to our bidding once, but it was to suit her own purposes, not ours."

"She will bend again. Like before, it is in her best interest to go," Breffort explained, unruffled, "and therefore, she will comply. Ishinomori is as much her and her partner's enemy now as she is ours. Corsica's Daughter is not one to sit around and do nothing when threatened, even if that means abiding Soldats."

The man with greyish-brown hair that fell in slight waves to his neck in the armchair to Breffort's left snorted softly, and a shade derisively. He swished the snifter of brandy in the glass he held elegantly in one white-gloved hand, gazing into its swirling burgundy depths before taking a taste. Once the glass left his lips, he spoke, his words directed at Breffort, but his eyes affixed to his drink. "You still believe she can be persuaded to join," he said. Breffort could practically hear the rebuke in his somewhat dumbfounded tone. "She will never join us. Altena saw to that." He shook his head slightly. "She is dangerous. Noir is dangerous. *Too* dangerous. Better if we'd had them executed after they dealt with Altena and her rabble."

There were some thoughtful mutters at this, but before they could be turned to mutters of agreement, Breffort interrupted. "Dangerous they are, but they can still be leashed and used. Used as they were supposed to be. As the Hands of Soldats."

The bespectacled councilman murmured contemplatively. "During the past several weeks, word has reached my ears that a great number of foreigners have been seen flocking to Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals headquarters, many of which are recognised to have been supporters of Altena and her now defunct ideology." Breffort had received reports detailing the same, as he assumed everybody else in the room had, too. Despite being in charge of putting down Ishinomori's revolt, he wasn't the only council member with operatives deep in Japanese society, least of all Yokohama's, in spite of the current tumultuous state of affairs for agents in that city. The blood of Soldats had stretched all across the globe, after all.

"Defunct indeed," the bearded individual adjacent to the man with the ponytail interjected. "Yet I have also heard rumours that they plan to follow in their toppled leader's footsteps and initiate Le Grand Retour once more. The fools. Do they really believe we fear it? That we tremble before archaic folly? They will be as successful as Altena had been, maybe even less. I can't even grasp *how* they will go about it."

The bespectacled council member glanced a touch irritably at his colleague and took a moment to adjust his glasses, appearing somewhat put out at being interrupted. Once he was sure there were no further outbursts imminent, he continued. "Unknown numbers congregate to be sure, but possibly enough for an army on top of what our young dissenter has already drafted from Kanagawa's criminal element. This conflict has been bloody on both sides, and it will only get bloodier if that's the case. Though I fear it will anyway, regardless. It would be to our advantage if Noir where there to lead our strikes, or at least to remove a few choice players from the field with surgical precision."

The man sipping brandy grunted disdainfully, but in grudging acceptance, also. He had always been a stanch advocate against Bouquet's inclusion in Soldats ranks, and in the existence of Noir in general. "Perhaps." He brightened suddenly, giving his liquor another spin in its glass. "Yes. Let the brazen upstart and the renegade Hands destroy one another. Even if one survives, we will be rid of at least the other."

"How much control do you really have over Noir, Breffort?" the blonde councilman probed, leaning forward a fraction in his armchair. "How much do they know?"

"They know enough," Breffort replied cryptically, pointedly ignoring the first query.

"And what, pray tell, is that?"

"They know what I want them to know," Breffort clarified without emotion, unwaveringly meeting his interrogator's eye. The blonde man relaxed back into his seat, his hands gripping the armrests, his heavy ring in plain sight. There was silence then, but the unspoken questions could almost be discerned hovering in the air amidst the council. How tight is the leash around Noir's neck? To what measure have they been tamed? Breffort was aware his peers were apprehensive regarding his influence over Bouquet and her partner. Too loose a leash, too little tamed, and Noir may ultimately turn on him and on Soldats, creating quite a thorny situation indeed. Alone, Soldats would crush them, but in the latter scenario the Eternal Darkness may perchance side with Ishinomori, and then prove to be a considerable menace. Having Noir under their banner would vastly improve the traitors' repute, and could possibly sway more people to rally to their cause. However, it was a very slim likelihood that Bouquet would consent to uniting with Ishinomori. Breffort had seen to that. But the council did not know what he knew, and therefore worried.

Yet worse in the council's judgment would be if Breffort's leash was too tight, Noir having been tamed too much. True, it meant that the young assassins would fight for them, but would Breffort then be tempted to unleash his pet Black Hands upon the council and seize control of Soldats' head entirely?

Wary, considering eyes watched Breffort, but he remained as unmoved as always. Let them deliberate, let them agonise. He could alleviate their fear by telling all, but he would not reveal all his cards nor disclose what he had up his sleeves; not now, not until what needed to be done was done. That fear, that uncertainty, was guaranteed to keep him alive, leaving him free to conspire as he pleased. As long as the council believed there was a possibility that he had Noir totally under his thumb, his position was secure. They would not make a move against him while risking swift and fatal reprisal.

"A dangerous game you play, Breffort," the blonde council member spoke at last. Breffort said nothing in answer. A dangerous game he played? It was a dangerous life he lived.

* * *

Kirika gazed sombrely out a window in the apartment she contentedly lived in together with Mireille, drinking in the Paris skyline for what would probably be the last time in a long while. Her arms were folded under her on the windowsill, supporting her slender frame while she leaned slightly toward the pale blue horizon laid out before her, the shade of a frozen lake. The window had been pulled fully open, heedless of the budding winter's hallmarks, inviting the cool late morning air into the living room. But the quiet girl was left unscathed by the chilly breezes that brushed her face and wafted through her short hair; her mind elsewhere, lost in introspective thought. Lost in a pale blue horizon.

Kirika's bag, coloured black and trimmed in yellow, and with yellow shoulder strap connected, was slumped like a giant lumpy sausage by her feet, its material bulging in some spots and flaccid in others. It had routinely carried her belongings to whatever part of the planet her and Mireille's assignments hauled them both off to, and had done so ever since she had agreed to come live with the blonde in Paris, the latter journey from Japan, though not exactly because of a contract-unless counting the fateful one struck between Kirika and her partner which would wind up shaping their lives to what they were today-included. This new assignment from Breffort was no different. Kirika's bag was already packed and ready to go, crammed to bursting with clothes and 9mm pistol magazines secreted in special compartments inside the inner lining that would serve to veil them from airport security. However, Kirika herself had chosen barely a handful of the garments. Earlier, when she had been indiscriminately pulling out articles of her clothing from the wardrobe with the intention of taking them along with her on the trip, Mireille had interrupted her and kindly yet compellingly advised her on which to bring and which not to bring to the point the older woman may as well have packed Kirika's bag herself. Kirika hadn't taken umbrage, though, and had agreed to all of her partner's recommendations-clothes were just clothes to her. As long as they could be worn and were reasonably comfortable, she didn't care what colour they were or what style they were cut in.

Mireille's intervention meant that the woman herself hadn't had the chance to tend to her suitcase, but was now taking the time to do just that in the bedroom. The last Kirika had seen, the blonde's suitcase had been flipped open on the bed, still empty, and had been surrounded by layers of clothes covering the bedspread with their hangers still attached. Mireille had been standing over the whole muddle with her hands on her hips and a serious expression plastered on her fine features, the wardrobe to her rear with its double doors flung wide open, virtually devoid of clothes but for a few of Kirika's that were remaining behind here in Paris. The statuesque woman had appeared to evaluate each item of apparel spread out in front of her very carefully as if weighing all their merits and shortcomings, sand-coloured eyebrows sloping and pink lips pursed thoughtfully. It had been as though she was selecting firearms for all the heavy consideration she devoted. Kirika felt it unnecessary deliberation, but what did she know about such things. She was sure Mireille had her reasons, although the girl suspected they would undoubtedly sound peculiar to her.

In spite of how much she seemed to agonise over the affair, Mireille knew how to pack light and minimise her luggage to a single small suitcase, and was skilled in using baggage space to its maximum efficiency. Still, it did take her a while. But in the meantime Kirika always found things to occupy herself with. Gazing inconspicuously at Mireille and admiring the divine woman's presence was one, and gazing at the sky, musing and reflecting, was another. The second fancy had taken her on this occasion, but given recent events, it was little surprise.

Spires and skyscrapers, rooftops and treetops, broke the panorama outside the window, yet neither they nor the view's familiarity to her eyes diminished its allure to Kirika. But there was something about a horizon that had always drawn her eyes, something about the sight of a sky so blue, so open, limitless in its vastness. It didn't matter where she was, exactly which horizon she was seeing; they were all the same to her. The same sky filled with the same infinite possibilities. Often Kirika had looked upon it since waking up in that bed, in that empty house of falsehood, wondering at what lay beyond the blue. Wondering what the future held… and earnestly hoping that it contained what was achingly missing in her life. In the past she had yearned for a cure to the loneliness that had constantly gnawed at her heart and dogged her existence from the moment she had awoke, namely the partner that the title, Noir, had promised. She could recall the many times she had stared out her classroom's windows after school was over back in Japan, wishing, and imagining what their face would look like when they at last met… or if they would ever meet at all.

But of course now Kirika was gratefully aware that her fears had been unwarranted. She now knew in vivid detail what her partner's face looked like, and just how breathtaking a face it was, too. She had committed every aspect of it, every dimple, every contour, to memory, glad to never have to resort to dreaming up its likeness ever again. And when she looked into Mireille's blue eyes, so similar to the sky she held in such esteem, she saw without uncertainty that whatever her future entailed, it rested with the woman. Kirika had a place in the world, and it was beside Mireille. Nothing would ever part them, bar the cold embrace of the grave. Even if-for some terrible reason Kirika would rather not think about-the blonde cast her aside one day, she, while being devastatingly stricken, would nonetheless remain hidden in the background; a demon forever watching over her angel from afar. It would be agonising to have Mireille hate her, to never be able to walk next to her again, or have a meal together, or share the same bed, but Kirika would bear the agony of a horrendously fractured heart to ensure that her wordless oath to Odette Bouquet would be upheld. Kirika would bear *anything* for Mireille… and that had nothing to do with atonement for past wrongs.

Despite all that had improved in her life, Kirika still gazed at the horizon, still she thought about what lay beyond it, still she longed for more change. Mireille had eased her lonely heart, but Kirika's soul cried out for freedom from further defilement. It cried out for a time of peace, a time when she would stain her hands black with sin no longer.

Nevertheless, as the young assassin stared at the serene Parisian horizon this morning, silently wondering, her yearning merely occupied a part of her deep meditative thoughts. The bulk of Kirika's mind was once again dwelling on what the future had in store for her. Specifically what it had in store for her and for Mireille. In Yokohama.

Kirika had had an opportunity to inspect the airplane tickets Breffort had more or less forced upon Mireille yesterday, and had noted that her and her partner's flight from Charles de Gaulle International Airport would land in Narita International Airport, located in the capitol city; Tokyo. But she was certain that their final destination would be the nearby city of Yokohama. The assassin had, when Mireille hadn't been busy frowning at them, scanned an attentive eye over the documents from Breffort's dossier that had once been scattered chaotically across the billiard table in the living room-but were now all tidily slotted into their folder again, waiting to be packed in Mireille's laptop bag and taken on their trip-memorising critical data on the enemy, and as a result was conscious of the fact that Ryosuke and Vincent, together with Kaede Ishinomori and whatever allies she had rounded up in Japan so far, called Yokohama their home. One way or another, Kirika and Mireille would eventually find themselves in that far eastern city. And to get there, they would have to pass through Kawasaki.

Kirika wasn't sure how she felt about that. Japan… Kawasaki…. They were places linked to her, linked to her sinister, anguished past. She understood what she *had* to do in Japan, and was determined to see it all through in bullets and blood if needed, but other than that, her exact sentiments on returning to her native land and birthplace for the first time since she had left it were difficult to ascertain.

Kirika recognised that she most likely had been born in Japan and, definitely, to Japanese parents-the face that stared back at her when she looked in a mirror was enough for her to conclude that-but precisely *where* in the country was up for debate… and that was only if her belief that she had been born in the island nation was accurate. However, Kirika considered herself to have been born in the city of Kawasaki, though not in the regular sense of the word. Her earliest memories were of opening drowsy eyes to the sight of a bedroom that was hers and yet not hers, in a house belonging to a family that didn't really exist. Memories of waking to the chime of a solitary name drifting through her head, a name of a destiny still to be resolved and realised. Memories of waking to a life made of lies and loneliness, danger and bewilderment. *Her* earliest memories-her own, personal memories that she had recorded herself. Kirika felt that she had been brought into the world on that day in Kawasaki.

It occurred to Kirika that perhaps there was more meaning behind that conviction than she had wished for. The assassin knew little of her life before her awakening in Kawasaki, apart from what she had pieced together using the memory fragments that floated around inside her mind like shards of a shattered mirror, shaping a jagged, mismatched representation of her past, a distorted reflection of the real picture. But the thing was that none of those fragments were actually memories that she had made herself. They didn't belong to the life she had lived, but rather to the body she inhabited. Then what exactly did that mean? Did that mean that Kirika had truly been born lying on that bed in Kawasaki, her existence as she knew it now given life when her eyes had crept open? Was the other her, the darkness, in fact the authentic her, and she herself a usurper of the body she-they-wore? Or was Kirika, as she believed right now and always had, the genuine owner of her body who had simply forgotten her past, and the darkness the invader who threatened to steal her identity unless she kept it at bay? Or were they one in the same, two distinct existences but both part of a whole individual, having been somewhere along line disjointed into two separate halves? Who could say which premise was the correct one, or if any of them were correct at all? Certainly not Kirika. Notions like those were on the threshold of her comprehension, befuddling to her brain, and not to mention unnerving to say the least. They were disturbing to dwell on for any length of time, quickly bringing down her spirits and forcing her ask questions of herself she would rather not address. Kirika hastily drove the unsettling musings out of her head, striving for solace in the calming light blue hues streaked with wisps of white ahead of her.

Never taking her eyes off the uneven horizon, Kirika reached a hand into a pocket of her parka and took out a small, white, rectangular card; one half covered in black scrawl, the other by a miniature colour photograph. Her gaze eventually panned downwards to favour it with an absorbed look equal to the one she had given the sky. It was the student identification card she had carried with her ever since she had discovered it in her bedroom in Japan. It was a total fabrication of course, with every personal detail listed from her date of birth to her very name, built on a lie. Only the portrait of the young darkhaired girl on the card had any validity to it. But forged or not, the ID was a symbol of who she was now. Her name, Kirika Yuumura, was a fake, but she had adopted and grown into the identity nonetheless. She *was* Kirika Yuumura now. Kirika Yuumura who had lived alone in what had allegedly been her parents' house while the figments were off in America; Kirika Yuumura who had attended classes at Tsubaki High School; Kirika Yuumura who was trained as an assassin and worked as such with a partner, Mireille Bouquet, a renowned professional killer in the European underworld; Kirika Yuumura who lived in Paris with said partner, Mireille, the woman who stirred her tender heart and placated her distorted soul.

In addition to being a symbol of who Kirika was now, the Tsubaki High School student card was a symbol of who she had been before meeting Mireille and learning of her intricate entanglement with Soldats; a reminder of the reasonably normal life she had once held, a life she aspired to someday capture an air of again. The girl's time in Kawasaki after her awakening, while fleeting, had had a feel of normalcy to it, even with the strange and disquieting factors lurking just below the surface of the otherwise ordinary life. Once she had gotten her bearings and grasped who she was supposedly meant to be from the clues sprinkled around what had apparently been her house, Kirika had settled into a routine typical of any high school student. She had went to school in the morning, listened to her teachers in class, prepared her own bento-after discreetly studying her classmates' labours and making several practice attempts-and ate it at lunchtime, and had did her homework. It had been a simple and monotonous routine, and one she had performed automatically, barely bestowing conscious thought to any specific facet of her daily schedule. A hollow and barren existence bereft of any significant purpose beyond that of getting to school on time and keeping up with her class's teaching program. The impression that things were… just *wrong*, that it was not supposed to be this way, had pursued Kirika every time she had donned her school uniform, every time she had took care of the household chores; it had been an uneasiness that had never left her for a moment.

It had been little more than a week before the first batch of dark-clad men fixated on murdering her had ambushed Kirika on the route back to her house one late afternoon after school. She had killed them all with a deadly grace that had astonished her, handling the Beretta that she had kept in her school case for safekeeping-a firearm that she had been startled to discover she understood the complete mechanics of-as though it had been an extension of herself. And then everything had changed; relative normalcy had been mortally wounded, bleeding out a bit more with each passing day. Kirika had craved the tedium of her routine, then, and began to savour its ordinary feel while it was not being shattered by sudden bouts of inexplicable carnage where she had been required to kill in defence of her life without even knowing why. Desperate to retain a grip on a dying lifestyle she abruptly appreciated a lot more, Kirika had even went so far as to incorporate the periodic assassination attempts into her normal daily routine, a wretched and inescapable part of that routine that came without warning, but one she accepted and dealt with as stoically and mechanically as cooking her dinner.

Her double life as high school student and target of shadowy hitmen persisted for a couple of months before Kirika finally acknowledged that she had to find answers to fill the gaping holes in her memory, or else sooner or later succumb to her yet unmasked foe, going to an unmarked grave without learning anything of who she really was and without coming close to achieving any of her dreams. So she had contacted Mireille, the pertinent information on the wonderful woman having been gained by scouring the files on the computer at her house. The blonde's had been the only record available, but Kirika had implicitly known that she was the right person to speak to about the riddle that had been her life. She had somehow known that the pocket watch she had found with the Beretta in a drawer of her dresser was the chain that linked them. The girl hadn't fretted over her decision whether or not to contact Mireille, someone she had been aware was a killer for hire; partly because of that confidence that they were somehow connected, and partly because she had came to an impasse where she *had* to take a step forward, irrespective of the danger, or fester and die.

And once Mireille made her entrance in Kirika's life, everything had changed again. For the better this time-obviously, with someone as marvellous as Mireille in her life-but Kirika's everyday way of life had been lost utterly in the process, whatever tatters that had remained, but that the girl had treasured regardless, blow away like dust in the wind. All that was left of that time-that life-was the card that she held in her hand. But would she trade what she had now with Mireille for what she had had back then? Never. She and Mireille could be under constant attack every single day of every single week, but as long as Kirika was with her love, fighting by her side throughout those days, protecting her angel, it was sufficient enough joy to nourish her heart.

Kirika resumed her contemplation of the sky above Paris, her cherished student card remaining safely cupped in the palm of her hand. Despite the extensive history between herself and Kawasaki, between herself and Japan-her birthplace, where her lost life had been lived, even the place where she had first met Mireille-one thing she was sure of was that she felt no allegiance or attachment towards either city or country. When she returned to Kawasaki, however briefly, she would not be returning home. Like Mireille and her opinion of her native Corsica, Kirika didn't look upon Japan as her home. *Here* was home, this apartment in Paris. Whatever her exact feelings about her and Mireille going to Japan, to Yokohama, were, Kirika at least knew where she belonged. Where she and her partner must eventually return. The future was unclear, but it *would* contain that particular homecoming, at least for the older assassin. Kirika would make sure of it... and pay for that guarantee in as much sin and slaughter as needed.

A piercing chill suddenly sliced through Kirika, cutting to the bone and turning marrow to ice. She shivered and hunched her slim shoulders into herself, huddling as if trying to keep warm. However, the abrupt cold was not due to a biting wind gusting through the open apartment window, and her huddle was not to aid in retaining body heat, but in fact an instinctive defensive gesture. After last night-after many nights, in truth, she now shockingly realised-Kirika had to question whether her prior thought had sincerely been her own. She was set on her path, resolute in her choice to kill as called for in Japan… but she wondered. Had it truly been her who had reasoned out that conclusion? Had that deduction been of *her* mind's own making?

Unlike the night before, Kirika could recollect the dream-the nightmare-she'd suffered last night, but not without being wracked by a severe sense of foreboding laced with trepidation. It was with a lump in a dried out throat and a clammy claw squeezing her heart that she remembered walking down the familiar dirt trail that led between the Manor's vineyards, remembered walking closer and closer to a patiently waiting Altena, kindly and slightly knowing smile on her face, the woman all but spreading her arms wide in welcome. And Kirika remembered having been powerless to stop herself from drawing nearer. Seeing a woman in her dreams who had been the closest equivalent to a high priestess of Soldats, a woman Kirika herself had pushed to a fiery death, a woman who had held sway over her life-dominated her being-nearly from the cradle, was bad enough, but the memory of the helplessness she had excruciatingly experienced was what made her tremble the most. That, and what she had heard, confined in her mind.

The dream had ended with the terrified girl waking up in a jolt, eyelids bursting wide open, and a distinct voice ringing in her head. The voice, no more than a whisper but seeming booming all the same, had had the unforgettable deceivingly compassionate tones of Altena's. How? Why? Kirika hadn't known then, panting softly in bed with cold dampness slicked across her forehead, and still didn't know now. But she knew where she had heard something of its like before. Several times before, in fact. Mireille had snoozed on peacefully beside Kirika for the remainder of that night, thankfully oblivious to her partner's frightful rousing, and hopefully dreaming easier, happier, dreams. But Kirika hadn't been able to let sleep claim her again until the blessed light of dawn fell upon the bed sheets, her body too tense, and her mind plagued by insidious insight. And all the while fearing she would hear the gentle, whispering intonations of a dead woman at any moment.

Kirika recognised now that her thoughts had been… erratic… of late. Notions and concepts that she would normally never have considered for more than an instant, if even that, had sporadically skittered across her mind; not so divergent from her own thoughts and feelings, and yet warped to have a harsher edge, a darker undercurrent. Attitudes and worries perverted to prejudices and suspicions, love and duty to zeal and fanaticism. The diminutive assassin couldn't quite recall when the distortion had first started, but she wouldn't be surprised if it was when the darkness had initially restirred within her. What she could recall, however, was that the twisted thoughts had gradually gained in potency as time had passed, hazy musings coalescing to explicit ideas, and last night, finally, they had completed the evolution from shapeless thought to unequivocal voice. Then, and *only* then, had Kirika grasped what was going on. She had been careless. A dangerous thing to be, when perpetually up against a bitter enemy such as the one she harboured inside her, an enemy as inescapable as though she and it-she and *her*-were each a side of the same coin.

Yes, the voice had to be related to the dark seed implanted in Kirika's head, a seed that had already cracked open, and recently had been ominously blooming in an obscurity imposed by its keeper's refusal to acknowledge it. A decision the girl hugely regretted now. Those disturbing thoughts, the manipulative voice that sounded like Altena's; it was some sort of assault on her by the darkness, by her other self. It had to be. What other explanation was there? It had been pure naïveté for Kirika to have believed that just because she was determined to prevail over her dark self; just because she had vowed to stand utterly firm against it; just because she'd had unwavering faith that she would hurl it back into the shadowed corners of her mind as if it were some mere errant thought; that the darkness would simply accede to her 'indomitable' spirit, that the black flower that oozed corruption would simply wither in the searing light of her conviction, the blazing rot spreading to its very roots and along them until the darkness was sealed into a seed once again, maybe even permanently. Just because the darkness was ignored, didn't mean it ceased to be. Kirika's overconfidence had left her completely vulnerable to attack, blind to her other self's machinations. She anxiously speculated on how much harm had been done in her ignorance, how much of the black flower's foul taint had leaked into her mind's thought patterns and had bent them to match her eternal foe's. Kirika wondered how much of her mind had been despoiled… and how much of it was still her own.

Kirika closed her eyes and clutched the student card in her hand tighter, as if holding onto it would in turn somehow help her maintain a steady grip on herself. She was scared and her self-assurance had been shaken, but she would persevere nevertheless. The petite girl was still determined to defeat her dark self, still vowed to confront it with a steadfast will, still had faith she would eventually imprison it in a cage of her mind's own making again. Kirika knew what to watch out for now, knew Altena's murmuring voice for what it was. There had been no further whispers in her head as yet, but she would be wary of them if they arose, and of odd thoughts as well, from here on out. Kirika would just refuse to listen to them, or better yet, not even acknowledge them; she would continue to resist the lure of the darkness no matter what. The fight between them was as real as any other the skilled assassin had faced whilst on an assignment, with the costs the same-it was a fight for her survival. And this target would not be vanquished as straightforwardly as those before. This target, after all, shared her essence. Shared her soul.

Kirika's eyelids brushed open as she abruptly picked up the rap of boot heels on hardwood resounding nearer and nearer behind her, the tempo well-known to her ears. Even if Mireille hadn't been the sole other person in the apartment with her, the young assassin would still have recognised that it was her partner approaching. Kirika could identify Mireille's step by sound alone if the surface the blonde trod on was hard enough, the woman's penchant for high-heeled footwear making it all the easier. She knew how fast her love's long legs could pump when dashing, how far her stride reached while strolling; the marked rhythms and others memorised, beats hammered into her mind. Kirika would never mistake Mireille for a skulking backstabber sneaking up behind her in the middle of a gunfight; never accidentally send lead streaming her partner's way as she flashed by in a sprint… as long as she heard her coming. Mireille could tread quite lightly sometimes, her stealthy advances on more than one occasion having forced Kirika to strain her sharp ears to detect her. And even then, sometimes the adept girl still hadn't. Like now, for instance. However, Kirika felt she knew why that was in this case.

Kirika turned from the window, and was a little startled to discover that Mireille was almost upon her, and even more taken aback when she cast a look past the woman's shoulder, espying the blonde's small trolley-like suitcase, obviously packed, propped with its carry handle extended up against the black partition separating the living room from the bedroom, positioned close to the short hallway that led to the apartment's front door. Yet doubly shocking was that a grey ceramic pitcher was in Mireille's hand, filled to the brim with water if Kirika's guess was right. Kirika hadn't heard so much as a grunt when her partner had hauled her suitcase down the bedroom's steps into the living room, not so much as a click of boot heels when she had walked all the way to the kitchen, nor a creak of hinges when she had fetched the big round jug from a cabinet, and neither the squeak of a turning tap nor the rush of flowing water when she had filled it. None of it had reached her ears. Or rather, none of it had passed any further than that. Kirika's ears had been open, alert as always, but her mind had been closed. She may as well have been deaf.

Mireille bent down to the potted orchid sitting on the small table next to Kirika and began pouring water from the pitcher around its stalk, the soil turning a dark brown bordering on black as it was thoroughly saturated. A placid smile curved the woman's mouth while her eyes regarded her toil. "You're liable to catch a cold standing there," Mireille remarked blithely without looking up, but there was nothing that was easygoing contained in her blue gaze. Stormy skies roiled there, tempests of thoughts and feelings pertaining to their imminent trip to Japan most likely, although they were probably a lot different from Kirika's own.

Kirika slipped her student card back into a pocket of her parka, almost having to pry her fingers from it, and then wordlessly pushed the two halves of the window closed, before latching it. She preferred to gaze at an unobstructed view of the sky, of the horizon, when she could, even if that obstruction was merely a glass pane. The vision was somehow… purer, more real, then. More sacred. And this morning she'd really had a need to gaze. But Kirika wouldn't have laid a hand on the window earlier if her partner hadn't been off in the bedroom, where looming winter's bite spilling into their home couldn't quite pierce the woman's flesh. Yet even then, if they hadn't been departing the apartment soon the notion to open the window wouldn't have even entered Kirika's mind in the first place. Time would have eventually honed winter's fangs, after all. Now that Mireille had left the limited sanctuary of the bedroom-standing adjacent to her and the window no less-the girl had not dallied in shutting the window and ceasing the influx of frosty air. Mireille would have been liable to catch a cold, too.

Turning back to the blonde, Kirika saw that water had begun trickling out of the collection of holes drilled in the bottom of the orchid's pot and into the saucer that held it, having seeped all the way through the sodden earth above. Kirika looked on expressionlessly as Mireille continued to cascade water into the clay pot regardless, until the jug was dripping its last and the saucer was verging on overflowing. The darkhaired girl seen the practice before, aware that Mireille only gave the orchid a watering like that when she predicted that an assignment might last a week… if not longer. The sight and the grim realisation coupled with it did not help Kirika's already ailing morning spirits. Nor did it appear to please Mireille any, her smile tight on her face, it clearly being an effort to make it stick.

Mireille straightened and took the empty jug back to the kitchen to refill it, before giving the other plants in the apartment a similar, if lighter, watering treatment. After she was done, she put away the jug and performed a final check around the apartment, ensuring that everything was in order; that is to say that everything that should be hidden-ammunition clips and other questionable items-was hidden. The landlord hadn't ever poked around their home when they weren't in as far as Kirika knew, but Mireille didn't trust him at all it seemed, not even agreeing to let him water the plants while they were away. The young assassin supposed it was safer having that sort of mindset; if he happened to uncover anything he shouldn't in their absence, it would likely land her and her partner in a great deal of trouble. Trouble of the kind they would probably have to clean up with a whole heap of bullets.

As she watched Mireille bustle, Kirika felt an nearly overwhelming urge to tell the caring woman her woes; tell her how she'd dreamt that bad dream again and remembered it this time, about the voice like Altena's that had whispered in her head, about the dark thoughts that had sometimes cropped up in her mind. But the urge was nothing new, and had already been curbed once before, when she and Mireille had been eating breakfast together earlier this morning. Kirika knew she could talk to her love about her private war, knew for a certainty that the blonde would listen attentively, be appreciative that she had shared, and provide as much support as she could… but the quiet girl also knew that Mireille could not help her. Not with this. Bad dreams were one thing, but this…. This fight was Kirika's alone. It always had been; her mind was a battlefield open to two specific combatants and no more. But alone she did feel in the struggle against her other self, yet despite that she chose not to drag her partner into it. She would not burden Mireille with something that would ultimately leave the woman feeling useless, and then later frustrated because she felt that way. No, there were no allies available in this conflict. It was just Kirika and the darkness. *Kirika's* darkness.

Her inspection apparently complete, Mireille came to a halt beside the end of the billiard table across from Kirika, her hands going to her hips. Following a moment of simply standing there, staring at the rack of billiard cues on the wall opposite with a distance look on her face, she raised her left arm to glance at the elegant gold watch strapped to her wrist, its face resting on her pulse point. An eyebrow rose in mild surprise at whatever time was displayed.

"It's later than I thought," Mireille informed Kirika, before looking up at her. The girl wondered if her partner had lost track of time while she had been engrossed in picking out what clothes to pack in her suitcase. It had happened before. "The taxi I arranged for should be here momentarily. We can wait downstairs for it, if you think you can brave the cold weather." The blonde threw Kirika a meaningful smile over the billiard table, one that said she knew perfectly fine how well the lean but resilient girl coped with the chill.

Kirika couldn't keep from smiling back just a tiny bit as she gave a little nod, in spite of her dismal mood. Mireille had that sort of affect on her, especially nowadays. She started to reconsider her decision to withhold her inner turmoil from the woman, but quickly arrived at the same conclusions as before. Still, it was nice to know that Mireille was there for her, if oblivious to her internal strife. Kirika took some comfort in that.

Mireille's smile became amused, its lustre captivating Kirika and holding her attention as well as her eyes as the beguiling angel it belonged to made her way towards the chair in front of her computer on the billiard table, where her packed laptop bag and greyish-brown coat lay, the latter slung over the chair's back. The blonde pulled on the coat, flicking her long tresses out over the collar to stream in a silky golden waterfall down her back, and then hung her black laptop bag by its strap on one shoulder. At this, Mireille's charm loosened the entrancing grip it had on Kirika enough for the once transfixed girl to remember-with a blink and some surprise-that she had a bag too, one she bent down and picked up, carrying it on her right hip with the yellow shoulder strap running crosswise over her body.

Mireille grabbed the handle of her nearby suitcase leaning against the black dividing wall, and then walked towards the front door, the suitcase trundling along the floor behind her on its two small wheels. Kirika suspected that she would be carting that suitcase around before they reached the check-in counter at the airport. She didn't really mind. It was a measure of how comfortable Mireille had become with Kirika that the blonde allowed her partner to carry her luggage for her. In the old days Mireille would have guarded her bags as if they were the refuge of secrets not for Kirika's eyes; the girl had not even dared to venture near them, let alone touch them. Nowadays nothing was off limits-luggage, shopping bags, groceries, and more, Kirika had ended up bearing at one point or another. It felt good to be useful, but even better to be helping Mireille.

Kirika followed after Mireille, but lingered at the mouth of the short hallway leading to the front door, turning back to survey the apartment-her and her partner's home-for one last time. It looked very quiet and empty, as if they had already left it days ago. Soft beams of sunlight fell through the windows, but not but a handful of dust motes danced in their midst, and their movements were slow, languid drifts that would eventually bring them all to land on floor or furniture. It was like everything in the apartment was going to sleep, breathing a final sigh before relaxing and settling in for a long wait. Awaiting Kirika and Mireille's return.

"Kirika," Mireille gently beckoned, her melodious voice coaxing Kirika out her reverie.

Kirika turned around to see Mireille waiting for her, patiently holding the front door open with a hand on the dull silver doorknob, and trotted down the hallway and past the faintly smiling woman into the corridor outside the apartment. She couldn't stop herself looking back one more time, however, as Mireille began to close the front door. Looking down the hallway she had just traversed, Kirika caught sight of her and her partner's orchid resting on the table against the far wall of their home. She wondered if the orchid would dry out and wilt before they came back, in spite of Mireille's pains to prevent that happening. Kirika hoped it wouldn't.

The door clicked shut.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

I decided not to name the Soldats council members and have sort of a SEELE (from Evangelion) mentality instead. I did consider having just 'disembodied' voices (i.e. "Council member one talks", then "Council member two talks") but I felt that would get too confusing to the point no one would know who was actually speaking. I hope that scene was okay.

I have no idea how Mireille and Kirika transport their weapons and ammunition from country to country, so I kind of glossed over that part. I suppose they could always take their guns apart and mail the pieces to themselves at their overseas destination… but that would leave them defenceless for a while, and it couldn't be *that* easy. Oh well, let's just not dwell on it. ^.^

More on the first Noir and Kind Mother in coming chapters. Their tale would be a fun and interesting one to write, I think. Perhaps that's something for me to do in the future. ^_^

Bento = Japanese lunchbox.


	17. Return, Act I

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The seventeenth chapter. A chapter *without* Mireille and Kirika in it! Eeek! Sumimasen!

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 17 - Return, Act I

Kaede's breathing came in measured, steady rasping pants as she glared intensely at her opponent through her veil of snow-white bangs, the long overhanging fringe matted to her forehead in places with light perspiration. The smile that was seldom absent from her countenance if ever was larger than usual, all but dominating her ashen face, the corners of her mouth pulled high into a feverish, feral grin; clenched teeth bared between tightly stretched lips. The slender yet solid length of wood she clutched in her white-bandaged hands before her creaked as she twisted her iron grip, lifting it slowly but surely until her fists, enclosed right above left around its bottom end, were in line with her head. A gentle curve bent the erect length of wood, the lower span where Kaede held it a smooth shaft of a handle, with the rest carved into the likeness of a katana; a delicate single-edged blade. It was a bokken; considered a practice weapon for the martial art kenjutsu, and for other Japanese sword techniques. But intended for practice or not, when wielded by Kaede she swung and thrust with it as if engaged in a real life or death duel, and struck with akin precision and ferocity, holding not a shred of her expertise or strength back. Restraint served to only blunt a warrior's skill in the long run, impressing a poisonous acclimatisation on the psyche to curbing blows that could generate hesitation in actual combat, hesitation that could spell the difference between glorious victory and blood-soaked defeat. It was solely amateurs, weaklings, or idiots who willingly handicapped themselves by indulging in spineless, stupid habits. Kaede vehemently believed a fighter should release all of their raging spirit in battle regardless of the circumstances behind it; to deny your spirit unmitigated liberation whilst in conflict of any kind was to deny your true self.

Kaede carefully shifted her stance a fraction, her bare right foot snaking backwards a few inches, squeaking on the immaculately scrubbed and polished dark wooden floorboards where not a speck of dust made its home. Dominique was *very* fastidious about cleanliness no matter what a room's purpose, even if that purpose routinely splattered rugs and furniture with spilt bodily fluids. There wasn't a stain that lingered for more than an hour after it had been made in Ishinomori Tower, and most suffered from an even shorter life span on the penthouse levels at the summit of the building where Kaede's family and the French woman herself took residence. Kaede's martial arts training hall where she was presently spending her time honing her proficiency with the sword fell under that latter umbrella, which was a good thing given how frequently she smashed this weapon rack to bits or sliced apart that wall hanging to ribbons during the mayhem of her practice sessions. Her blazing spirit once unleashed was hard to control, like a rabid beast let off its chain, hungry for carnage and thirsting for chaos. Fortunately, for all of her tsking and tutting at the sight of hacked furniture and scuffed floorboards, Dominique scolded Kaede light-heartedly at worst for her occasional frenzied destructive binges. She rarely lost her temper with Kaede, but when she did, it rendered the younger woman a weeping wreck. A cross word from Dominique could tear her open like no weapon existing on Earth or even forged in the Heavens could.

The shrill, curt sound of Kaede's movement filled the otherwise quiet training hall, and she tensed as she braced her right leg on the ball of her newly-positioned foot. Her eyes had stayed firmly on her sparring partner in front of her while she had arranged herself and thus she noticed his body stiffen in response to her altered stance, raising his bokken slightly in preparation to counter whatever she had to throw at him.

Kaede's opponent who she had been trading heated blows with for the better part of a half hour was a greying, bearded man a dash past his middle years, but what could be seen of his body underneath his loose garb of white uwagi and indigo hakama was all sinewy muscle, like the hard roots of an old oak tree. It was as if every ounce of fat had been boiled away from him, leaving behind no more than the base constituents of a man. Spry as he was, he could brandish a sword with the grace of a viper, and strike with the alacrity of one, too. Horiuchi was a kenjutsu master; the newest of a lengthy string who had been persuaded to further Kaede's already enormous understanding in the art of the sword. How he and his predecessors had been persuaded or even chosen the swordswoman hadn't a clue-Dominique saw to it all, but the instructors she arranged for always met Kaede's requirements… for a time. Horiuchi may have been as strong as aged oak and as quick as a viper, but Kaede was vengeance personified; implacable hatred fuelled her muscles and divine fury propelled her hand. And sooner of later, vengeance caught up with the damned… and delivered holy retribution.

Unlike Horiuchi, Kaede's clothing deviated vastly from the traditional dress of a kenjutsuka. A baggy white tank top and equally loose-fitting grey silken drawstring slacks made up her outfit, and was informal attire to say the least. But Kaede didn't care. She held no stock in tradition or customs. They were merely ornamental, superfluous; it was the art itself, the method of handling the blade, the method of piercing flesh and cleaving bone, which had bearing with her. If it did not help in broadening her knowledge of the raw skill, then it had no value and thus was cut away like a bad piece of meat. With this severe mentality only the choice parts survived-the all-important core. The fundamentals of killing with a sword.

Neither Kaede nor Horiuchi wore padding or protective gear of any kind over their differing garbs; this was a duel between masters, not some lay spar between teacher and student despite what the pair's affiliation may allude to. The snow-haired woman was an expert kenjutsuka in her own right, the gore of dozens upon dozens of slain enemies having tarnished the purity of her hallowed katana's delivering razor edge during her lifetime, followers of kenjutsu and other sword arts among them. But being an expert, a master, wasn't enough; she sought absolute perfection. She had already achieved oneness with her katana, yet still she strived for more, still she relentlessly pitted herself against fellow kenjutsu masters and their particular, sometimes unique styles, adapting her own to counter theirs before drawing on her new-found or modified techniques to crush them in single combat, forcing them to submit beneath her conquering wooden blade. Kaede could tolerate no margin separating her from perfection; she had to narrow it at all costs, come as close as she could to perfection with her katana if not actually attaining blessed perfection itself. Weakness could sneak into that margin at any instant for as long as she let it linger, and no margin was too small not to invite it. Kaede couldn't afford to be weak. Not now, not ever. She *had* to be strong. Strong enough to take on the devil-spawned ilk of Soldats. She would show them that she was not some gnat buzzing at their ear that would desist if swatted aside often enough. The ghosts of Soldats' past sins had come back to haunt them; the spirits of the wrongfully slain were compelling Kaede to bring their murderer to justice. She was their vessel-a righteous avenger. She had to be strong… like steel.

A nervous tick suddenly developed in Kaede's right cheek, a rapid muscle spasm that made one corner of her wicked grin twitch erratically. Yes… strong, like steel. Like Big Brother. He was strong. He was the strongest person Kaede knew. And he never betrayed any weakness of self to anybody-certainly not to his enemies, but not even to his friends or family. Kaede wasn't as stalwart as Big Brother and doubted she ever would be, but she at least never openly bared weakness to any of her foes, or to those who could potentially become one… in other words, anybody who was not among her closest, most loyal circle of allies. That was another reason why you shouldn't ever inhibit your fighting spirit, why you shouldn't ever hold back. Holding back was a sign of frailty, that you had a crippling dearth of mettle to see things through completely. Kaede didn't hold back; hadn't ever. She would make Soldats taste the bitter tang of fear, force it down their throat, make them acquainted with it as though they were constant bedfellows, make Soldats fear's whore. No weakness would cause her to waver from her sacred mission. She would be strong-she *was* strong! She *had* no weaknesses! Kaede would drive the accursed Soldats out of Japan and all the way across the ocean back to their roots in Europe, with those few who survived the expulsion having the privilege of being put to the sword in their motherland, their blood watering their native soil. All the lands of the world would be purged of their vile presence. The vengeful Heavens had judged them as the most deviant of sinners, beyond salvation. Only eternal damnation in the pits of burning Hellfire awaited them. Kaede would see to it that all of Soldats met their just fate. They would pay! Oh, how they would *pay*!

Kaede's breathing had quickened in tempo little by little as her thoughts had raced, and had become heavier, deeper, her chest heaving up and down like a thoroughbred steed's-a warhorse's-following a fierce gallop into the frontlines of an awaiting army, a rank-breaking charge. Her pants came in louder and louder rasps while her body tightened like a compressing spring, the rock-hard, lean and well-toned muscles in her bare arms become increasingly defined with every passing moment. The bokken that Kaede held aloft trembled as her grip on it intensified, as though she were attempting to squeeze the life out of the weapon and it was giving its final death rattle.

All of a sudden Kaede seemed to reach a peak, a boiling point, and her breathing stopped dead. Her bokken ceased shaking, and her muscles locked. In the next instant she was surging forwards through the air towards Horiuchi, springing off her right foot with the ferocious roar of a vicious dragon leaping for the jugular of its prey, its maw open wide. The swordswoman knew for certain that this would be the last round of their duel.

Kaede's bokken flashed diagonally downwards at her adversary with enough force to break his neck if the blow connected, but Horiuchi had obviously foreseen her opening attack and matched it strength for strength with a countering crosswise swing of his sword, the two faux blades striking one another with a sharp crack. Neither bokkens budged more than an inch once they had joined, not even when Kaede's feet had hit the floor and she utilised what remained of her leap's momentum to throw her weight against Horiuchi's sword. Both kenjutsu masters' unyielding arms shuddered alongside their wooden blades as they tried to push the other off balance, Kaede's muscles noticeably bulging with the effort, the cords in her neck as thick as rope and as taut as violin strings. Her quick breath seethed past her gritted teeth, spittle flying and dribbling down her chin as she stared defiantly at her opponent, less than a foot between their rigid faces; one harbouring untamed fury, the opposite a mask of determined calm.

The seconds ticked by with neither Kaede nor Horiuchi gaining the upper hand, their swords locked in a stalemate, until by some instinctual mutual agreement they broke apart, momentarily darting away from each other, before launching themselves headlong across the gap separating them to exchange blows yet again.

Horiuchi led his rush with a thrust from his bokken aimed at Kaede's chest, a thrust that was deftly slapped aside and safely clear of its target by the sneering woman with a single swipe of her own sword. Kaede retaliated immediately afterwards, executing a stabbing thrust herself but at her opponent's throat, aggressively attempting to press home the advantage she had gained by smacking his weapon out of the way of his body. However, Horiuchi's reflexes were on par with Kaede's. Almost as soon as his bokken was knocked away, he swung it back obliquely across his chest from his lower right to his upper left, intercepting the snow-haired woman's lunge in the nick of time and smashing her weapon up over her head.

Kaede managed to hang on to her bokken as it was violently bashed into the air above her. The hit had not come anywhere close to endangering the death grip she had on it, but she still spat an angry curse through her gnashing teeth regardless, aware of how open the parry had left her. Yet her sword was not her only defence. Kaede's unbridled rage was a shield; the potent, reckless fervour it lent her body and mind a stubborn if crude, brutal, form of protection. But Kaede had no aversion to the crude and brutal. Vengeance's fury coursed hotly through her veins, and the cruel ferocity it endowed her with was not meant to ever be tempered.

Horiuchi quickly reversed his bokken's trajectory, his sights set on the opening in Kaede's defences he had wrought. If his blade had been real, the ensuing slash would split the woman's chest from breast to navel. It was an obvious move, one that a kenjutsu master or a beginner would have struck with, foreseeing the sure end of the duel with them the clear victor. But Horiuchi's discipline would be his downfall. He was too strict in his ways, in his technique-devoid of passion. He could not compete with Kaede and her pious rage. He would be cut down.

Kaede reversed the arcing path of her own weapon, chopping cleanly and keenly downwards a mere fraction of a second after the length of wood had been deflected in the opposite direction, having expected her grizzled opponent's uninspired manoeuvre before he had even altered his sword's position to commence the sloping finishing stroke. There wasn't any means to block Horiuchi's incoming attack, but Kaede wasn't looking to. Her bokken's swing came behind her confident adversary's, yet it was the one that counted. Kaede heaped all of her strength into the slice, all of her avenging power, which equated to thrice what Horiuchi had put into his. Consequently, when her slashing bokken linked with the greying man's from the rear and their momentum was pooled, stacked behind the latter kenjutsu master's sword, it was *she* who controlled its stroke.

Horiuchi grunted as wood shoved wood with indomitable brute force, whether in shock, alarm, or because of the impact of the hard blow itself, Kaede wasn't sure. In truth she barely registered the grainy rumbling emitted from his throat, her mind clouded by the heavy red haze of burning anger, the lone parting through the fog a roiling tunnel that only channelled thoughts about seizing revenge for past defeats beneath Horiuchi's tutoring sword… a revenge within reach.

Kaede exercised her dominance over Horiuchi's swing to viciously hobble its range, literally cutting the slice short with the deft and compelling cleave of her bokken so that his once sure finishing blow missed her by a hair's breadth. But a miss was still a miss by whatever distance irrespective of how slim, and thus it was more than enough to turn the tables in the snow-haired woman's favour, enough to transform Horiuchi's certain triumph into certain doom.

Kaede's sword pressed her opponent's downward until the latter's tip was scratching the varnish off the floorboards, and then she held his bokken steady there beneath her own imitation blade, trapping it. Consequently she couldn't bring her weapon to bear against him and put an end to this duel without releasing his, but a kenjutsu master did not rely solely on their sword. Or at least a master of Kaede's calibre did not. If separated from her katana she was still very capable at defending herself and at neutralising aggressors-permanently. Her katana was just an extension of herself; both she and it were weapons, two weapons that could forge a partnership together and become one-a combination that was devastating. Kaede's sword had done all it could now. It was left to her to finish the task.

Horiuchi's eyes dropped for a split second to his and Kaede's crossed and wedged bokkens, their depths for once showing a glimmer of distress-a glimmer that flared to utter panic once he lifted his attention back to his foe and saw the young swordswoman's snarling face converge rapidly on his stunned own. Kaede's forehead struck like a battering ram against Horiuchi's face as she decisively head-butted him, and with an audible crunch of shattering cartilage and an eruption of bursting blood vessels, his nose was pulverised into a satisfying red and black pulp.

To his credit, Horiuchi did not scream in unchecked anguish as most would upon suffering the grievous though essentially superficial injury, but he did make a gruff grumble of pain and reel back a step, his clearly dazed head bobbing and lolling indolently on his shoulders as if attached to his body by a spring. Before he could recover his senses or recoil further, Kaede reared back her head-her fringe of formerly pure white hair now generously speckled with dark, clotted blood-and delivered a second crushing impact with her hard skull against Horiuchi's gore-splattered visage.

This subsequent blow so soon after the first proved too much for the old kenjutsu master and he lurched back a few more steps, his arms dangling stiffly by his sides with his bokken held limply and seemingly forgotten in his left hand. Horiuchi's ruined nose streamed blood down to his chin like a thickly flowing river and coloured his grey moustache and beard scarlet. His eyes were scrunched in abject agony, his tortured face a web of wrinkles previously unseen. He was aged oak tasting the bite of the woodcutter's axe and on the brink of toppling. Cracks had appeared in his spirit and were splintering then spreading like wildfire; just one more hit and it would break, one more chop and aged oak would be felled.

And chop Kaede did. With splashed blood now streaking the middle of her face to be a near match to Horiuchi's, Kaede hoisted her bokken in her two hands up into the air beside her head, adopting the same stance she had before at the beginning of this duel's final round, and then swung the length of wood at her swaying adversary's temple. The faux blade struck its target unopposed while Horiuchi floated in his stupor, the clean hit punctuated by a dull thud. The grizzled man's head snapped violently to the side before prompting jerking the rest of his body along with it, the kenjutsu master spinning around before crumpling heavily onto his forearms and knees, subjugated at Kaede's feet, his bokken whirling away from his limp hand across the floor.

Horiuchi moved feebly, crawling on all fours like a whipped, pathetic dog with its tail between its legs and its head bowed, the once imposing and dignified kenjutsu master brought low to his rightful place kneeling, cowed, before an invincible, self-assured Kaede. She towered over him in her proven superiority while blood dripped profusely from his broken nose and dotted the floor in a quickly amassing puddle, his bloodied and bruised face illustrating her victory over him; her dominance. But their duel was not done. Horiuchi was bested, yes, but his lesson had not been fully learnt yet. Now Kaede was the teacher, and Horiuchi's lesson had to be hammered home so he would not forget it. He had to *recognise* that his rightful place was prostrate beneath her, that her triumph over him today was a product of her outstanding skill and not of mere luck, and that the same result would transpire any other day from now on if he ever challenged her to cross swords again, seeking to regain his lost honour. He had to accept that Kaede was his better, that her blade cut swifter and cut deeper than his-that she was the greater sword master. Because she *was*. Because his rightful place *was* beneath her, because she *would* triumph over him again in battle. So that he would remember those truths, so that they would be imprinted permanently on his mind, his defeat had to be devastating. *Crippling*.

Stepping nimbly around her fallen opponent on the balls of two light, dancing feet, Kaede threw her bokken out to the side in her right hand, and then without hesitation or mercy, brought it crashing down on the back of Horiuchi's head, on the tender spot where the base of his skull connected with his vertebrae. She made no effort to moderate her coup de grace despite the aged man's all but conquered condition, concentrating all of the ferocity that surged within her turbulent spirit into the potentially paralysing blow. Such was the ferocity's strength that Kaede's bokken exploded on contact with Horiuchi's drooped head in a shower of wooden shards, half of a coarsely splintered carved blade spiralling off to clatter in some far corner of the training hall.

The loud crunching snap of Kaede's bokken fracturing asunder echoing off the walls heralded the conclusion of the duel, Horiuchi succumbing to the comforts of unconsciousness upon having his head used to split the sturdy weapon crudely apart. The kenjutsu master instantly slumped flat onto his stomach as if someone had suddenly exchanged the muscles in his supporting arms and legs for water, his cheek hitting the hard floorboards with a slap and his tortured face settling into the expression of an uneasy sleep. A bloody paste of a tint verging on black matted his formerly shaggy hair, the thick grey covering seeming to have done little if anything to cushion the punishing impact of Kaede's sword. Needles of wood varying in size and shape were knotted in the sticky tangle of blood and hair, and more littered the back of Horiuchi's white gi and were scattered haphazardly atop the floorboards surrounding him. Horiuchi uttered not a sound, not now in his slumber or before when he had been ruthlessly bludgeoned. Whether his neck was broken or not, Kaede couldn't tell. She mused that he might not even be sleeping; he could be dead, his body now a vacant husk and his soul already on its last and most important journey. His slumber could be the sacrosanct one that all women and men must one day yield to, the one that wrenched the soul from the earthbound shell and ushered it towards final judgement where its ultimate fate was carefully weighed and then decided by the Gods-saint or sinner, the Heavens or Hell.

Whatever the case, it was beyond Kaede's concern now, although she would feel no pity if Horiuchi was dead. Honour would be more like it. Delivering a soul into Death's waiting hands to be carried away for judgement was something to be venerated, more so if that soul were immaculate. Slaying sinners was a duty, but slaying saints was an honour. Kaede could not distinguish for certain which Horiuchi was-or had been-but she believed she had seen the good in his unblinking steely gaze underneath the cloud of discipline that had obscured it. If he were dead, then he would be welcomed with open arms in the Heavens.

Kaede stared down at her vanquished sparring partner as she stood over him imperiously. Gradually her arms lowered to her sides and her severe grip on the remains of her bokken slackened. Her heaving chest softened its swells and their frequency diminished, the heart that had once thumped maniacally there mellowing to an easier rhythm. In tandem her hot blood calmed its crazed gush through her veins, its spur no longer quite so adamant. The red haze that pervaded her mind thinned and then cleared, taking with it the heat from her temper, cooling it to a low, edgy simmer. It felt as though her skin was on fire, that its pallid complexion should instead be a bright red, flushed, with rising steam hissing from every pore. Her sweat was abruptly chilling to her body and she was made very much aware of it trickling down the middle of her back and sliding past her temples. The young woman had an urge to shiver and even hug herself; such was the loss of warmth.

Kaede's spirit was receding within her, withdrawing its influence over her heart, mind, and body; the beast retreating and becoming caged and muzzled once again. With its exodus and restraint Kaede felt weaker, the strength fading from her limbs and her body suddenly feeling more sluggish and ungainly. Her fiendish, manic grin shrank in intensity too, and in width, dwindling from a frenzied rictus to her usual smirk. It had been as if Kaede's feral fighting spirit had possessed her face to convey its tempestuous, murderous rage in the mêlée, the beast contorting her visage to mirror its own and spit its vehemence. But it was exorcised now, as was the rest of her spirit's sway over her. The duel was done. Vengeance had been dealt.

"There is nothing more you can teach me," Kaede said to Horiuchi's prone and unresponsive form, undeterred by the latter. "Begone." She tossed the stump of her shattered wooden sword unceremoniously on her former tutor's back, the latest of many who had met similar fates, and then crisply turned and walked coolly away.

With Kaede's dismissal of Horiuchi by word and by sight, the two women who had up until then been mutely standing adjacent to the walls at relaxed attention opposite each other in the rear half of the training hall, abruptly left their posts and advanced on the lifeless kenjutsu master, as if new life had been shot into their previously idle bodies. The pair was smartly dressed in trendy black business suits that clearly once had had expensive price tags attached to them, and both their outfits were cut in identical styles, albeit for the difference of slacks on one and a straight skirt that ended just above the knees on the other. The short thick heels of their black leather shoes clicked on the polished floorboards as they walked, their stride and posture exuding poise and pride, and the silver pins on the left lapels of their jackets flashed under the lights of the room. Up close, those small round badges portrayed two kneeling young women swathed in robes, facing each other, and bearing double-edged swords of European origin in their hands. It was an ancient emblem-or so Dominique had claimed when Kaede had pressed her on the subject-and one that was apparently still in use today… by the hated enemy, Soldats. However, purportedly that use was rare and grudging at best, owing to the shame those of Soldats felt from turning away from the true purpose of their secret society, of forsaking their true dogma ratified over a thousand years ago when the world was tearing itself apart. Now, Dominique had said, she used it as a symbol of Soldats' roots, of Soldats' ancestors come back to punish their wayward kin. Those who wore the pin were unshakably loyal to the Soldats of old, and totally committed to overthrowing the fetid Soldats of present day.

But what Kaede saw when she espied a silver pin on a black collar or lapel was a lot simpler than what Dominique invested in the insignia. To Kaede, those badges and dark suits marked out those of her faction who were the most reliable and trustworthy, and the most capable-her elite soldiers. They were like Dominique, in that they had all seen the light and had defected from Soldats, sharing the same conviction as the French woman's; that Soldats was a sinful organisation needing to be purified by fire and sword. Consequently all of Kaede's elite soldiers lived up to the title. They were Soldats trained, making them the equivalent of a Special Forces military platoon where each member had diverse abilities-some were excellent tacticians and outstanding commanders, others flawless snipers and experts at evading notice, several were masters of unarmed combat and explosive wizards; the assortments were as plentiful as they were varied, skills from every walk of life wielded by people just as divergent. There were even a few historians and fencers; a couple of the second had invited themselves into Kaede's training hall to watch her practice her kenjutsu forms once, muttering between themselves in a foreign tongue while scrutinising her katana's strokes intently.

Strangely, every last person that made up Kaede's elite detachment was female. But when considering that Dominique supervised the division and screened every new defector wishing to enlist with the utmost diligence to weed out possible Soldats spies trying to infiltrate their ranks, it was not that surprising. Dominique did have a low opinion of men that was quite widely known, and even though Kaede had never seen her being intimate with anybody, the snow-haired woman suspected her personal assistant's taste in romantic companionship ran alike with hers, favouring the female persuasion. There was the possibility that Dominique was just a complete prude, but Kaede found that notion highly dubious with a Parisian woman like Dominique who emanated elegant sensuality from every fibre of her being no matter what the circumstances. Perhaps she was merely picky, or married to their mission of retribution. In any case, Kaede sincerely doubted she would ever see a man sporting the illustrious silver pin on his clothes.

While they were elite soldiers, the women converging briskly and portentously on Horiuchi also held a mantle that was greater than that. They currently belonged to Kaede's personal bodyguard, a shadowing quartet that had been appointed to serve and protect her by a concerned Dominique at the commencement of their crusade against the scourge that was Soldats. Trusting the young woman's welfare only to those whose loyalty to their cause and whose competency fulfilling the imperative task were above question, Dominique had decreed that the elite detachment's primary role was to always safeguard Kaede's life first and foremost beyond any other duty they might additionally be bundled with. But to make absolutely certain that she was being continuously looked after rather than merely in passing, the French national had ordered that at least four members of the elite Soldats renegade branch must accompany Kaede at all hours of the day and night regardless of what the snow-haired woman was doing, the sole exception being when she retired to her quarters where they instead stood vigilant outside her door to allow their charge her privacy.

It was all too much in Kaede's opinion. She was not some delicate damsel needing to be coddled; she was a battle-hardened warrior with the spirit of vengeance on her side. Even so, Dominique had shooed away her protests about being babied, and four was the lowest sum of guards the young woman had been able to talk her overprotective assistant down to. Kaede reluctantly confessed that despite her objections she was fairly fond of Dominique's doting, but she wished the older woman would give her a little more credit. It didn't help that Big Brother behaved much the same, habitually having their old yakuza friends quietly tail her or escort her under the guise of keeping her company. Both Dominique and Big Brother knew what she was capable of and that she had been chosen to be an avenger; why did they persist pampering her? None of the guards they allotted to watch over her could even come near to matching her power. They were like wolves defending a dragon.

Kaede picked up soft breathy grunts of exertion behind her as her two dark clad protectors, unconcerned whether he had spinal damage or not, seized Horuichi by the arms and roughly hauled his face from the floor, the rest of his rag doll body closely following suit. His sagging, floppy bare feet squeaked against the wooden floorboards, skidding along in tow behind him like dead weights as the duo dragged him off to the training hall's side door at the back of the room to see him disposed of. What that entailed precisely Kaede wasn't wise to and hadn't bothered enough to remedy that deficiency. Whatever happened to her ex-kenjutsu tutors, suffice to say that after they were bodily removed from her training hall she never had another opportunity to lay eyes on them again.

Not deigning to so much as glance over her shoulder at the activity taking place behind her, Kaede continued to stroll towards the front of the hall unperturbed. The pitter-patter of lively clapping coincided with her approaching footsteps, its source the small group of women gathered near the training hall's front entrance ahead of her. One of their number was another of Kaede's bodyguard, set a little but obvious distance apart from the other two women where she leaned casually with her back against the wall next to the room's double doors. Her arms were folded below her breasts and her head was lowered, her eyes hidden behind the lenses of jet-black sunglasses, giving the erroneous and potentially fatal impression that she was asleep on her feet and oblivious to her surroundings. She was a foreigner, as were the two guards lugging Horiuchi off to the unknown behind Kaede and the fourth and final sentry of the quartet standing watch outside the room's entrance. Three quarters of the elite Soldats deserters under Kaede's flag hailed from overseas, representing ethnicities from all across the globe. Approximately half that called countries in western Europe home like their colleague Dominique; France, Spain, Germany, and Italy standing out as the prevailing native lands. Never before had Ishinomori Tower been so bustling with foreigners. But Kaede bore no prejudices against her non-Japanese allies; they were all comrades-in-arms, united for a singular righteous purpose. It was a glorious thing.

The applauding tapered off as Kaede joined the other two women of the group; the one responsible for the ovation stepping keenly forwards to meet her. Like the members of Kaede's bodyguard, the woman in question was born outside of Japan, yet her distinctly oriental attire certainly suggested the contrary. A voluminous yukata complete with obi hung from her bare creamy shoulders, scarcely clinging as though just a touch would send the garment sliding entirely off her body to puddle about her feet clad in white tabi socks and zori sandals. Kaede knew the obi wrapped securely around the woman's midriff would prevent such a calamity from happening-indeed, it was probably the only thing barring the yukata's shameless descent to the floor-but without it she would have been risking a sudden total exposure of her feminine beauty at any moment she so much as breathed too hard. While the brazen arrangement of her clothing revealed a wide 'V' of beguiling cleavage deep enough to swallow anyone's gaze, what it didn't reveal was that beyond the woman's shoulders, upper chest, and the narrow valley between her luscious and ample twin swells, she was just as naked underneath the yukata's folds. Kaede was one of very few and select people who was privy to the private personal detail; after all, Claire regularly dressed and undressed in front of her, the latter normally to bare her body and all of its exquisite treasures to the snow-haired woman. Kaede was intimately familiar with every inch of that alluring form concealed and unconcealed by the enveloping yukata, and not only by sight but by touch and taste as well. Claire was her whore.

In truth, Claire could really be called Kaede's concubine instead of being labelled a mere common tramp. She diligently tended to all of her mistress's personal needs like washing and drying her, dressing and undressing her, and seeing to her general comfort as if she was a body servant… although she was more of a servant to Kaede's body than other help typically was. As Claire's title implied, in addition to ensuring that her mistress's daily needs were catered to, another of her responsibilities was to gratify Kaede's… other, even *more* personal needs. To Kaede's chagrin, the pleasures of the flesh were a vice she had considerable trouble denying, a weakness she realised, but one that even her indomitable will could not withstand. However, she admitted she didn't really try that hard to resist her desires that frequently led her to find succour in the arms of other women. Favoured by the gods she was, but Kaede was still human with a few yet to be conquered human frailties… some more tolerable than others. Besides, her weakness for female bedfellows was innocuous and taken care of by her concubines; it wasn't as though it put Kaede's campaign against Soldats in jeopardy.

Claire stood a couple of inches taller than Kaede, and her loose-fitting yukata couldn't hide a build that was rather petite, the obi emphasising a waist that was even smaller than her mistress's already slender own. Her slightly diminutive physique was hindered by a quite impressive muscle tone however, along with curves verging on voluptuous for her figure made more so by her tiny waist, her chest in particular prominent. Dark red hair akin to the colour of a ripe cherry, red wine, or congealed blood, fell in several plump and untidy spiralling ringlets to roughly a hand's breadth past Claire's shoulders, the two shortest framing a cute angelic or impish face-however one wanted to look at it-that seemed to never be long without a tickled smile upon it. A few stray bangs jutting out from the top of her head where the tapering ringlets began their swirls hung over eyes a duller shade of red, almost a subdued orangey-brown like a pair of unpolished garnets. Yet despite their tint Claire's eyes had a naughtiness about them to go with her mischievous face. And naughty Claire could certainly be if her playful antics around Kaede, explicitly whist in her bedroom, were any judge. But there was something else Kaede occasionally glimpsed in her eyes… something that emphasised the imp in her-the demon inside-her roots as a sinner. Depravity of the body was Claire's obvious sin, but this demon espied was of a different variety. Strange… but it could just be a figment of Kaede's imagination. Dominique had done all of the arranging of the woman's 'services' and had sworn to her that Claire was of the faithful. Kaede's guardian would not see a snake share her bed.

Her adorable countenance made Claire appear young, and at a casual glance one could mistake her for a girl in her late teens. Like her perceived innocence, her real age slanted more towards the opposite end of the spectrum. Claire was in fact older than Kaede, in her early thirties, although her exact age was a mystery to the snow-haired woman. Claire had been warming her bed for a couple of months now, yet many things about the woman still were to Kaede; her race, her probably debauched background, even her family name. They were details she could easily find out by talking to Dominique, but she had no interest in them. She was not looking to be Claire's friend, nor did she wish for the woman to be hers. Claire's purpose was to perform as her concubine; to fulfil the function she was allotted. So long as her finer points did not intrude upon that duty or any of the other personnel's in Ishinomori Tower, they were irrelevant.

In her spare moments spent in Claire's company, Kaede sometimes did idly speculate on where her concubine was from, however. Her facial features marked her clearly as a westerner, as did her odd wielding of the Japanese language, the pronunciation of numerous words peculiar to Kaede's ears. Kaede sometimes imagined that Claire was European, although she had no concrete basis for that presumption besides that most of the foreigners packing Ishinomori Tower's halls came from that continent. She did however recall hearing the redhead mutter things under her breath in English every so often, too low to actually decipher but with recognisable heat, and thus the possibility that Claire originated from an English-speaking country had crossed the kenjutsu master's mind. Nonetheless, at the end of the day Kaede's ponderings were moot and remained what they always had been-idle.

Claire's fat coils of ruby-red hair corkscrewing their way down from her head were striking, but it was the garish and graphic yukatas she wore that first drew the eye. Apparently having a penchant for traditional Japanese culture-or at least for the fashion at any rate-Claire was nary seen outside of Kaede's quarters lacking a yukata on the verge of slipping from her shoulders, each one as extravagant and lurid as its predecessor. Red was forever a prevalent colour, although the shades did change, and the yukatas' rich decorations encompassed every available square inch of fabric-often even the obi was involved. Subtle designs in the vein of a handful of falling cherry blossoms or a pair of birds in flight were notably absent in favour of sprawling hectic scenes featuring conflict of some kind; order versus chaos a principal theme. Today Claire's yukata told the tale of a fierce battle waged between ancient fully armoured samurai brandishing katanas and the sporadic wakizashi, and burly malevolent oni of many sorts and shapes grinning wickedly while their fangs and talons put their enemies' defences to the test. The yukata depicted a struggle unresolved, neither samurai nor oni giving the impression of having the upper hand, or that they would gain it anytime soon. It was another customary theme of all of Claire's yukata pictorials; eternal stalemates between two opposing sides, the combatants locked in a war without end.

The broad, deep sleeves of Claire's yukata flapped amid her quick movement towards Kaede, a samurai with raised sword bristling and a horned oni's bulging muscles flexing. A cheery smile brightened her pretty face and washed a further five years from her youthful veneer, the beam for her mistress just as sycophantic as the clapping had been.

"A splendid performance," Claire praised, adding predictable verbal accolades to her ingratiating routine at the same time she intercepted Kaede's march, positioning herself to block the swordswoman's path. "But one to be expected from a warrior of your calibre! Your expertise with a blade has been evinced to be unparalleled yet again."

Kaede, unfazed by the obsequious behaviour, did not slow her stride and pressed onwards, Claire swinging her body aside smoothly to make way yet not missing a beat with her fawning talk. The head of the Ishinomori family expected to be treated with a healthy dose of deference from her underlings, but Claire's toadying every so often bordered on patronising, her tone cavorting dangerously close to sarcastic. It was a very subtle bordering, but the objectionable trace of rebelliousness was there. The conduct was not considered by the kenjutsuka to be befitting in a subordinate, and rendered worse when that subordinate satisfied a function as intimate as the one Claire did. Kaede contemplated that she might have to put her sometimes disrespectful concubine firmly in her place someday-strict, defining discipline that the younger woman contemplated she possibly should have administered at the very beginning of their relationship-teaching her that her mistress was not ignorant to her condescending attitude, and that her position in the kenjutsu master's life did not impart her any leniency from her stern and punishing hand.

Walking past Claire, Kaede came to a stop a short distance behind the redhead, standing in front of the last woman of the little group loosely assembled in the vicinity of the training hall's chrome main entrance. The woman was the most subdued of all of the room's occupants-other than Horiuchi, of course-but in a very different manner to the nearby guard's relaxed alertness. Like the guard her head was lowered, but a cowed gaze was settled uneasily on the floor, sunken eyes rimmed below with dusky shadows numbly staring. The subjugated atmosphere smothering her was thick, heavy and oppressive; her bowed head, her hunched shoulders, her broken and deadened stare; all contributed to paint a bleak portrait of defeat and desolation, human misery at its deepest and darkest. She was how a servant was supposed to be: submissive and quiet. And a servant she was. Fumiko Morita had been serving Kaede for a long time, benefiting from several years of precision sculpting courtesy of her mistress that was responsible for shaping her into the painfully shy and subservient being she was today.

Fumiko was a young woman around Kaede's age, comparable enough to have potentially been her classmate in high school back in the day, and reached about her height as well, standing virtually at eye-level with her mistress. But where Kaede's slender physique had been toned to a trim muscular thanks to her life of martial pursuits, Fumiko's slender form was just that-slender. While she was not bony by any means, she was quite lean, missing the well-rounded curves and generous bust of Claire. But that was not to say she was any less ravishing in her own fashion, or that she was bereft of shapely feminine lures, lures that Kaede most certainly enjoyed in as many ways as they could be enjoyed.

Fumiko was not second to her counterpart Claire in looks, either. She was tremendously pretty, blessed with a wholesome beauty like that of a fresh-faced country girl. Her pallid, sickly complexion of a hue that rivalled Kaede's pale own and her worn-out and miserable appearance did diminish her splendour somewhat however, and coupled with her spare frame gave her an almost ghostly, wraithlike quality. Yet even then Kaede still considered Fumiko the most exquisite creature she had ever seen. From her light blue eyes as distinct as though they had been cut from azure crystal, to her lustrous dark green hair that flowed down in thick waves about her slim shoulders like a crimped mane of overlapping lush forest leaves, she was quite simply beautiful. Kaede reflected that Fumiko might very well have been the woman accountable for her deep appreciation of the female form just for simply being the marvellous example of feminine majesty she was. After all, Fumiko was the first woman-the first *person*-Kaede had ever been intimate with.

Contrasting Claire, Fumiko was not devoted to Kaede voluntarily. While Claire could be described as a concubine, the green-haired maiden was the closest match to a slave there was. Fumiko had not been recruited; she had been *enslaved*. The young downtrodden woman was a relic of Kaede's stint in the Kanagawa Kotetsu, her finest and most cherished relic.

To settle an outstanding monetary debt to the yakuza clan's cutthroat loansharks of a sum he could never hope to pay off himself, Fumiko's father had consented to have his eldest daughter, a university student at the time, butchered and her organs harvested to later be sold on the black market. Kaede's bosses in the Kanagawa Kotetsu decided not to immediately kill Fumiko however, instead electing to have some 'fun' with their new acquisition first before her trip to the human slaughterhouse. As it was, Kaede had stepped in before either foul fates could befall Fumiko, exploiting her respectable standing in the yakuza group-which had been mainly built on the substantial stack of dead bodies she had amassed during her career-to claim the previously damned woman as hers.

Make no mistake; Fumiko's plight had not incited pity in Kaede. It was her unblemished beauty inside and out that had captured Kaede's interest-her unspoiled virtue. To see a pure soul, a true saint in a world overrun with sinners, was a rarity. Too frequently where they consumed by the hateful environment they were forced to co-inhabit with their polar opposites in, their decency shining brightly like a star in the night's sky and attracting the darkness that would close in around it and one day dim and distort that light, before snuffing it out altogether and replacing it with more shadows. Kaede had wanted to preserve that light, that beauty, and bottle it in a sense, keeping it for herself to admire.

Legally dead attributable to a forged death certificate and with her family having forsaken her, doubtless believing that certificate to be testifying the truth by now, Fumiko's life was utterly in Kaede's hands to do with as she desired, at the mercy of her every capricious whim. Fumiko was a slave until she truly did die, for only in death would she find freedom. Kaede owned her as someone owns a pet, feeding and clothing her and providing the living dead woman with shelter and care within the walls of her home, walls that were effectively those of a kennel.

No collar was visible around Fumiko's neck, no binds restraining her hands and feet; there wasn't a need. Acute drug addiction made up her chains, the finest of Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals' outlawed products snorted up her nose or injected into her veins regularly every day. While Fumiko may dream of escape, her dependency on Kaede to supply her with her desperately craved-for banned substances kept her in line and malleable to her owner's will. The costly drugs she was hooked on she could never afford to buy on the street-if she could even find a purveyor who sold the quality product she was accustomed to imbibing-and so all the prospects of escape presented at best were that of a harsher existence where Fumiko would be forced to scrape for a meagre income any way that she could to support her expensive habit. Her family would not help her; her own father had traded her life for money, after all. There was nowhere for Fumiko to go; her home, prison may it be, was wherever Kaede's home was.

All those factors had their part in making Fumiko the perfect concubine in Kaede's eyes, the perfect toy for her to play with, a saint whose esteemed purity she could test the endurance of and see for herself what the limits were before a saint chaste of heart and innocent in soul de-evolved into a sinner vile in heart and twisted in soul. Claire, for all her lovely charms, wasn't really necessary; an extra treat after the main course. But Dominique believed she was, declaring that Kaede should have a 'proper outlet for her lust'. Kaede was not one to ever spurn her guardian's kind gifts, or not gifts that belonged in her bed at any rate, so she had graciously accepted Claire and while not quite welcoming her, had partaken of her services on many occasions. There was no danger of Claire usurping Fumiko's special status with Kaede however; the innocent doll would always be the white-haired woman's primary means in which to vent her primal desires.

Fumiko held out a fluffy white towel in somewhat unsteady hands to Kaede, her head staying down and her eyes remaining dropped to the floor and turned away from her mistress's blood sprayed face, deference and fear glimmering with parallel uneasiness in their watery blue depths. Fumiko's trembling extended to her whole body; her slim shoulders delicately shivering; and escalated ever so slightly as Kaede's hand neared to take the proffered towel, her muscles tensed to such rigidity it was as though they were about to shake apart under the strain.

Fumiko clearly relaxed once Kaede took the towel from her without incident, her chest collapsing as she released the breath she had been holding. Kaede supposed her slave had a right to be petrified of her when bearing in mind what ill-treatment she had put the young woman through in the name of her experiment, an experiment that had been ongoing now for more than a few years with indignity and torture heaped upon indignity and torture. And yet underneath her wretched and whitewashed veneer Fumiko's goodness had survived, her heart still pure and her soul unsullied. Her body was withering, her mind shattering… but her virtuous essence remained unharmed. In Kaede's eyes, Fumiko was strong. She had the spirit of a warrior.

Kaede scrubbed her face clean of Horiuchi's blood and of her light sheen of built up sweat, and then ran the towel down the back of her neck, mopping up more droplets of cool perspiration. Before she could do much more however, a pair of hands materialised over her shoulders and took the white towel now grimy with maroon smudges from her. Kaede felt the towel drape about her neck and shoulders, followed by firm hands massaging her recently exercised muscles through it, wiping skin as they went. It felt good, soothing after giving over her body to her furious spirit, the strong kneading fingers penetrating deep and their motions loosening muscles in readiness for another bout of training or combat, whenever either may come.

"Now that you have soundly trounced Mr. Horiuchi," Claire intoned from behind Kaede, the owner of the hands, "I presume it is time for another…?" The warm breath belonging to her words spoken close to Kaede titillated the nape of the white-haired woman's neck, very nearly triggering an electric shiver to tickle her spine that would have had nothing to do with the sweat chilling her body. Kaede masked the affects of Claire's breath teasing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise and of her concubine's rubbing hands liquefying her muscles well, aloofness her cover. She stood there stoically, immobile and with a shrewd smile frozen on her features while Claire tended to her, for all intents and purposes appearing oblivious to the redhead's stimulating ministrations.

"No. Enough," Kaede murmured quietly, partly in reply to Claire and partly to herself. There would be no further sparring against any more kenjutsu masters in the safe confines of this training hall. A war was being waged outside its secure walls; skills would be honed in true duels to the death from now on, perfection with the sword found in the ordeals of the battlefield; be they blade against blade or blade against gun.

Under Kaede's seemingly eyeless stare owing to her bangs and adopted indifference, Fumiko nervously clutched at the front of her sky blue sundress while keeping her head down, wrinkling the thin, virtually gossamer material in two tight, clammy, and quivering fists. The dress was a sky blue that moulded to her trim frame like a glove to a hand, accentuating the shape of her willowy curves such that they were all the more gratifying to behold in spite of their narrowness. Kaede had picked out the dress for Fumiko to wear herself, as she did the captivating woman's entire wardrobe. It was to be expected that she considered the dress enriching to her pet's natural beauty; it was the core purpose of all the outfits she chose for Fumiko. Beautiful creatures should be wrapped in beautiful things.

Kaede lifted her bandage-swathed hands and presented them before the apprehensive Fumiko's wilted gaze, trusting that having a task to carry out would pose as a distraction and put the frightened lamb a little more at ease. A tentative blue gaze slid from the floor to consider Kaede's hands, flitting uneasily between both back and forth, as if she was scared to let her eyes loiter on her mistress's death-dealing hands overly long. However, Fumiko was implicitly aware of what was required of her and that dawdling or refusal to comply would be frowned upon-and frowned upon *hard*-thus her dithering persisted for only a couple of seconds before her fear of punishment superseded her fear of touching her subjugator's hands, hands that had disciplined her on countless occasions through her and Kaede's years together.

Fumiko's hands cupped Kaede's right one as they would cup a ceremonial goblet or prized trophy; carefully and with grave veneration. Kaede's left hand fell to her side as Fumiko's graceful fingers sought out the start of the bandages binding its equivalent, light fingertips smoothing and pitter-pattering across the white mesh. The green-haired maiden's touch was soft and gentle and yet possessed an oddly warm trait, and Kaede could not help but be lulled by it. It was a simple touch in comparison to Claire's hands working her neck and shoulders, but it did much more for her than the massage could ever do.

Kaede could feel her hand beating rhythmically within Fumiko's two, throbbing in time with her heart, as if she were somehow deeply aware of every drop of blood pumping in every vessel criss-crossing through it. She longed for the bandages to be removed, for the numbing buffer to be stripped off and the tactile sensation heightened, experienced as it should be with no restrictions, skin on skin. Her breathing was sluggish and level, held rapt along with her senses, her being concentrated on her hand; ensnared. Everything else seemed to become muted, the peripheral slowly dimming; Claire's pompous voice flattering her on her decision to discontinue sparring with fellow sword masters, the redhead's kneading fingers, the rasp of the towel on her flesh, the chill of her sweat on her body; it all seemed to fade and become part of a dispensed with background, overlooked ahead of an infinitely more compelling attraction-the caresses of an angel. Fumiko commanded divinity at her fingertips, the quintessence of Heaven contained in her every touch. It was calming to Kaede, a taste of the tranquil. For the time Fumiko touched her Kaede's personal crusade didn't seem so important any more, her furious war against Soldats all but forgotten and her lust for vengeance gone as if it had never been. There was no need to fight and kill, no need to roar and rampage, no need sate the desire to avenge in her heart. Kaede was at peace with herself and the world around her.

But peace never lasts. It was the concept of dreamers and weaklings, blinkered idiots who did not see the world for what it during was-a constant battlefield where conflicts continually arose, hearts and minds and bodies pitted each other. Kaede mused that there was truth in the scenes Claire's yukata's illustrated. Kaede's peace was ruined in this instance while Fumiko was unwrapping the last of the bandages around her left hand and Claire was swabbing her back with the towel pushed up inside her tank top. That ruin came by way of a curt succession of raps on the reverse side of the room's front doors, booming thumps inside the cavernous training hall. Kaede instantly stirred from her blissful torpor, her body jerking stiffly to attention as recollection of exactly who she was returned in a deluge of memories and emotions; that old bitter vendetta, that old hot-blooded fury, and that old deep-seated hatred.

Kaede turned her head towards the double doors just as they swung open, a familiarly uniformed Soldats renegade appearing between them with her hands resting on the handles. The elite soldier tilted her head in a crisp nod upon her entry-a nod respectful for Kaede's position and apologetic for the interruption. The snow-haired warrior accepted the gesture through a stony visage, her smile cold now that her sacred duty was restored in her mind to consume her every waking thought once more.

"Pardon the intrusion Lady Kaede," the guard said, standing in the fissure between the hall's open doors and with her hands still on their handles. She was another foreigner, and spoke in clipped French. Not all of the Soldats defectors who wore the prestigious silver badge knew Japanese, thus the many who did not had resorted to drawing on what French they were conversant in to communicate with Kaede. It was fortunate that Kaede was very articulate in wielding the language, the upshot of abundant lessons with Dominique as a young girl and recurrent chats with her former teacher using the tongue while growing older. "But Mr. Ryosuke has returned from his trip."

Kaede gave an immediate start at the mention of her sole surviving and dearest blood relation, and a moment later a softer, warmer aura overtly took nest around her. The incessant smile on her face lit up tenfold, icy and sinister no longer but radiant, a smile that was all ingenuous joy simply at hearing that a loved one had come home. Gone was the seething crusader; that element of Kaede receding from the fore yet again, diluted in an instant to expose the adoring little sister shrouded deep underneath.

"Big Brother?" Kaede said, very nearly gushing. "R-Really?" She tried to keep her tone level, but the excitement quivering just below her words was clear, so close to the surface that it caused her voice to quaver also. She so wanted to believe the elite guard's news but needed to be totally sure that her elder brother had in fact returned to Yokohama, to the sheltering fortifications of Ishinomori Tower, and not to mention still with life in his body. Kaede *had* to see him. See him with her own two eyes and verify for herself that he was back and all right.

Big Brother had been away for so long-too long. Away on an important mission for the pious cause, yes, but still for too long. Kaede had missed him terribly, her loneliness compounding as each day went by bearing no word from him either good or bad, and her mounting worry had fared no better with the lack of reports. Big Brother's friends who had stayed behind in Japan had tried to reassure her that he could look after himself, that he was an adept soldier, a battle-hardened warrior like her, but it had not done much to lessen her concern. France had been a distance place to Kaede where anything could happen to her older brother while he was there, in the middle of a notorious bastion of Soldats, the land swarming with the enemy. The fretting sister had known that her brother was not entirely alone in the hornet's nest with Vincent to watch his back, the Chinese triad associate an accomplished soldier in his own right, but they had still been merely two against innumerable opposition. The pair had bet on their small number being what would let them slip inside France's borders and roam within them undetected, however Kaede had known that there was little that escaped Soldats' myriad of ever-vigilant eyes. Kaede and her supporters had gouged most of those eyes from the lands encircling their headquarters in Yokohama, but Kanagawa prefecture was a place unique in that regard. Soldats' eyes remained very wide open in every other locale across the globe.

But that was all moot, now. Big Brother and Vincent had been in the thick of enemy territory unaided yet had apparently returned with new war stories to recount about their exploits there. Kaede didn't even really care if her brother's assignment had been fruitful or not; she just wanted-needed-to see him. No, that was not completely true. Dominique had coveted that old French tome quite badly, and had seemed to believe it critical to the achievement of their goals. Therefore a part of Kaede did hope that Big Brother had been successful, if just to please her cherished guardian. Even the prospect that the book would somehow assist them in instigating Soldats' fall was secondary to that. A very close secondary, but secondary nonetheless.

"Take me too him," Kaede half demanded and half implored, not waiting for confirmation to her earlier inquiries from the guard. The young woman took an impulsive step towards the black clad foreigner and the training hall's front doors, forsaking the nurturing of Claire and Fumiko. The first concubine shot her mistress an exasperated glower as she was forced to hurriedly jerk the towel out from underneath the back of Kaede's tank top. Claire then crossed her arms huffily, the towel suspended between a thumb and forefinger, and twisted her lips in displeasure at being totally ignored-the equivalent of a sullen but adorable pout for her cute face. Fumiko on the other hand slumped to her hands and knees, Kaede's unexpected movement making her drop the bandages she had just unravelled from the kenjutsu master's left hand. Her hands scrambled frantically on the wooden floorboards like a pair of ashen spiders for the strips of white fabric, her rather wiry fingers their skittering legs, while she whispered a deflated apology. When Fumiko had finally gathered the bandages she clasped them to her chest and sat upright on her knees, lingering there genuflect on the floor looking as meek as ever. But Kaede did not pay heed to the differing actions of her pets, the two women all but unseen. She had only one interest at the moment. "I must see my brother now," she reiterated, this time with a dash more demand bolstering her voice.

"Not in that state you aren't!"

Dominique's throaty yet dignified voice sliced through the air of the training hall as sharply and finely as Kaede's katana would, seizing the attention of all, in particular the elite guard holding the room's doors open. The guard spared not a second in yielding a path for her division's first lieutenant, releasing the door handles and bowing low in a European fashion, right arm across her chest with her palm over her heart, as if in reverence to a monarch. She then slinked out of the room as the tall and regal woman marched into it at a vigorous stride, Dominique's long legs sheathed in diaphanous black stockings making short work of the distance separating her and Kaede. Dominique stopped in front of her charge, the younger woman rendered diminutive by her superior height, and Kaede was granted a whiff of the stunning French beauty's aromatic perfume as it wafted over her carried by the draft of the curt arrival, a piquant bouquet that enriched the air and excited the senses. "Look at you," Dominique tutted, her hands on her well-formed hips, "you can't see your brother like that! You're a mess!"

Kaede's mouth screwed up into a disgruntled pout that was a contest for Claire's as she glanced down at herself, noting her scruffy and very casual exercise outfit, with her tank top stippled in places by her seeped-through sweat; odorous sweat that she felt still clinging to her body while it slowly dried. She wondered if Dominique could smell the result of her workout above her perfume, very much hoping that the fragrance was heady enough to mask her musk and not offend the older woman's delicate nose. Kaede hoped that there wasn't any blood still left crusting in her hair or caked on her face. Yet despite her, she had to admit, plainly beleaguered appearance she wasn't going to give in that easily. "Aww…. But Big Brother…" Kaede whined petulantly, the only means she could think of to assail her guardian's sentiments and with any luck inspire her sympathy.

"No!" Dominique said with no-nonsense and a dismissing wave of her hand, derailing Kaede's hopes. "You must bathe and dress appropriately this instant. You don't want your brother's first sight of you in all these weeks to be of you dirty and dishevelled, reeking of perspiration, do you?"

Kaede sighed softly to herself and inclined her head slightly in tepid assent. She knew when she was beat, and defeat came habitually when trying to oppose her strict guardian. Dominique also held great stock in physical appearance and personal hygiene; picking up on the pungent smell emanating from Kaede must have been the clincher. Kaede had just known she would notice it. Dominique always noticed *everything*.

"No…" Kaede said resignedly.

"Yes? What was that?" Dominique persisted, her tone dryly expectant, wanting certain obedience.

"I said no…" Kaede restated a little louder, but no less lackadaisically.

Dominique smiled affably; her wish fulfilled; and then snapped her fingers at Claire, the signal turning into a point at Kaede. "Claire, attend to her," she ordered tersely with a voice used to being obeyed.

Claire threw Dominique a withering look, but a split second later the redhead was all bright smiles. She unfolded her arms, slinging the towel over a forearm, and then clapped her hands together enthusiastically. "Yes, come along now Lady Kaede, let's get you all washed up for your big brother," she said cheerfully, ushering Kaede towards the doors with a gentle hand cupping the snow-haired woman's left elbow.

Fumiko, still kneeling on the floor, gasped in alarm as she realised Claire and her mistress were leaving and rushed to her feet, gliding warily past Dominique with her typical lowered gaze and after the pair, trailing a few timid steps behind them. Kaede's personal bodyguard filed out after Fumiko, the two that had disposed of Horuichi back from their errand, and once they had cleared the hall they moved smartly to loosely encircle the trio, ever wary of the surroundings and those who dwelled within them, irrespective their station.

"But… but what about Big Brother?" Kaede asked, troubled, casting a look back over her shoulder at Dominique who had remained in the training hall.

"Oh, not to worry. He'll still be here after you have bathed and dressed," Dominique placated as she watched Kaede and her entourage depart. "There is no hurry."

Kaede nodded, feeling better thanks to her guardian's sensible assurances. Her step lightened as she was led away to the baths, eager to be washed and pampered to sweet-smelling perfection before meeting her brother.

"No hurry at all…" Dominique murmured quietly to herself, out of Kaede's earshot. "'Big Brother' can wait."

* * *

Wait. Ryosuke had finally set foot on his native Japanese soil once again, and with that blasted book of Dominique's in hand no less, and she made him wait. He hadn't been anticipating an open-armed reception from his nemesis by any means, but the cold shoulder treatment was mystifying and not to mention frustrating in the extreme. However patience was one of Ryosuke's fortes; he had stoically tolerated Dominique's venomous presence corrupting his family and plaguing his home for years now after all. He could dance to her tune-or rather sit to it, as was the case here-as gracefully as if he actually relished it, whatever that tune may be amended as it often was, the rhythm altered by the gaijin's mercurial caprices. But one day this lithe dancer would impassively gambol to not another single beat of his musician's drum, one day he would find a way, an opportunity, to safely silence his foil's music decisively; permanently. But today was not that day. So Ryosuke sat. And he waited.

Ryosuke had been notified upon his arrival at Ishinomori Tower that Kaede was 'engaged with a prior commitment' for the time being, and 'requested that he wait'. Neither his sister's words nor the truth. Knowing Kaede, if she'd had her way she would have come barrelling towards him hours ago, delivering the warm and eager welcome Ryosuke would have much preferred over the brush off he had received so far. It was obvious that Dominique was responsible for the forced wait. Kaede was another dancer to the French woman's melody, but the music affected her differently, like that of a Siren's enrapturing song. Deplorably Dominique had relegated Ryosuke's little sister to her trusting puppet, and Kaede didn't seem to be remotely aware that she was being readily led about by the mere crook of her assistant's finger. Kaede was known to suffer from simple-mindedness sometimes however, and her affection for Dominique as… as whatever she viewed her as-surrogate parental figure, perhaps?-had probably blinded her to the older woman's arrant yet sly manipulation of her. That deep emotional attachment of Kaede's to her devious tyrant made severing the grip Dominique had on her a very grim if not hopeless endeavour for Ryosuke, especially when taking his sister's delicate mindset into account.

The compounding traumas of having both her father and mother ripped out of her life before their time, and perhaps the violent manner in which they were taken as well, had seemed to inflict equally compounding psychological damage on Kaede, lucidity decaying away through the never-healing mental scar. Kaede wasn't the same sister Ryosuke had known and grown up with as a young boy. In days so long ago that girl had existed, and now his memory of what she had been like then-her innocent laughs and sunny smiles, gentle touches and gentler disposition-had blurred radically to an indistinct smudge of vague images and outlines. A terrible loss, and one he mourned, interred deep in a hardened heart. However, enough memory persisted within that smudge for Ryosuke to recognise that something was very… wrong… with Kaede. But it didn't take a close sibling of hers to discern that unsettling fact. It was like some unknown malignant entity had taken up residence in his once sweet younger sister, twisting her, pulling apart her innocent and kind nature and warping it into something else, something vile and wicked, a hideous mockery of the compassionate soul she had once been. Call that entity what you will; a monster, an evil spirit, a demon, a devil-it was irrelevant. The distortion of Kaede's heart and mind was done, the corruption complete and seemingly irreparable. Now Ryosuke's sister was a sadistic fanatic, prone to excessive outbursts of anger and beset with mad delusions. It pained Ryosuke to see her that way. But who was he to say anything about Kaede's transformation, really. They had both changed inside, become darker, jaded. All children lose their innocence when touched by the outside world. An inevitability of growing up.

Regardless of her mounting insanity, her escalating violent eruptions and viciousness, Ryosuke still loved Kaede. Kaede was still his little sister, the only family he had left. He would *always* care for her and protect her. For those reasons and her fragile state of mind, Ryosuke had spared her the truth about their mother and Dominique's illicit relationship and consequent betrayal of their father, and of his suspicions that they'd had Shinichi Ishinomori murdered, his convenient fatal car accident likely a formulation of foul intent. Ryosuke worried what affect the revelations would have on her, the stress of them a liable threat to her tenuous hold on what measure of sanity she had left. That Dominique was the most trusted and closest person in Kaede's life after-or was that before, now…?-Ryosuke himself also quieted his tongue; the treachery of his younger sister's adored personal assistant and confidante likely enough to smash her mind beyond repair, the third and final trauma a blow to destroy it outright. Kaede had borne enough harm for one lifetime; Ryosuke would be the shield saving her from any more emotional anguish, as he ought to be being her older brother, even if that meant acting as a shield for Dominique as well, keeping her past deceitful sins to himself for his sister's sake. Ryosuke would even go so far as to defend Dominique's life from harm if it were threatened; as long as Kaede felt the way she did about the traitorous gaijin he would swallow his hate down like so much rising bile and see the woman protected.

But this arrangement would last only as long as Kaede's fondness for Dominique did. The instant their rapport waned, soured, Ryosuke would set upon Dominique with the alacrity of a goaded dragon snapping at a noxious viper slithering insolently in its lair. He just needed a single opening. He would see to it that Dominique would have no chance to evade his vengeful bite. The start of all of Kaede's dire ills led back to her by some route, roundabout or in a straight line, but every course pointing out damning guilt. Kaede's broken condition was the result of Dominique's poisonous meddling; she was the lone person to be blamed for all… *this*. Ryosuke had no love for Soldats, the murderers of his mother, but it was Dominique who was primarily accountable for Hikaru Ishinomori's demise and her daughter's psychosis. It wasn't much; it wouldn't bring back his light-hearted and happy little sister, it wouldn't bring back their parents, it wouldn't mend their mother's wrecked image in his eyes, but Ryosuke would see Dominique punished for the grievous wounds she had caused his now tattered family, wounds that still bled to this day. Sooner or later he would see her dead. Simply that-*dead*.

A shifting of clouds in the sky that Ishinomori Tower scraped unveiled the formerly blotted sun, light intense to Ryosuke's eyes sifting through the spaces left by the thick grey blinds hanging over the far-stretching window that made one complete wall of the aptly named waiting area outside Kaede and Dominique's executive offices; the wall facing the couch where the white-haired man sat with apparent aplomb despite having been snubbed, leaning forwards in his seat with his forearms resting on his knees. Ryosuke's reaction to the pain suddenly aching behind his eyes was robotic, a hand going inside the front of his overcoat and pulling out his round blue-tinted sunglasses, putting them on before becoming a picture of cool patience once again.

The thick ancient tome that he and Vincent had successfully smuggled out of France after a lengthy and trying hunt in Paris was a weighty presence inside his black overcoat, pressing against the already heavy steel plates sown into the front of the armoured garment. A weighty presence in more ways than one. Ryosuke still didn't know quite what to make of the book, this… 'Langonel's Manuscript'. That Dominique hadn't rushed to meet him and claim the book was bemusing, considering how adamant she had been concerning its worth. Maybe obtaining the tome had truly only been ploy to get him out of her hair for a while. Or perhaps Dominique didn't want to appear too eager to get her hands on the tome, adopting a back flip of her previous stance. Or her intentions of having Ryosuke wait like a flouted fool could simply be to further annoy him, adding just a final little bit of irritation to an irritating assignment.

Ryosuke couldn't say for sure what Langonel's Manuscript's importance or Dominique's need for it-if there was a need-was. A thumb-through appraisal of the parchment-like pages of the tome on the flight back to Japan had unearthed nothing really of interest printed within, merely gibberish penned in French. 'Les Soldats' had been referred to several times, but the prose was in the style of obscure poetry, reading like an abstruse yet epic ballad and accompanied by illustrations drawn in the European middle-ages format, castles and knights with moats and swords abounding, thick dark lines defining their vividly coloured forms as if replicas of stained glass windows in a church consecrated to war. If there was anything of value in the book, then Dominique alone knew the secrets to finding it.

The eruption of a long, loud, and laboured sigh of acute distaste and boredom next to Ryosuke signalled that Vin, who was sitting beside him suffering Dominique's rebuff just as he was, was due for another aggravated rant of his, one that would likely be a near exact duplication of the rant he had just moaned out several minutes prior… and a duplication of the rant several minutes prior to that one as well. Vin had the trying tendency of repeating himself when irked-which was unfortunately frequently-a sort of nagging complaining, a reoccurring whine about whatever petty irritations were bothering him. Dominique certainly wasn't the only person who exercised Ryosuke's stubborn patience. But Ryosuke wanted Vin with him, flaws and all, and now especially. Dominique truly seemed to despise the triad affiliate, her hostility towards Vin merely being in her presence unmistakable in spite of her toil to uphold a low-key exterior façade, and that was reason enough to keep the man by his side. Anything to give Ryosuke an edge over his nemesis.

"I still don't get why *I* have to be here," Vin griped, kicking his left leg that was crossed over his right rather vigorously. His arms were folded behind his head where was he slouched on the couch beside Ryosuke, and his eyes were dusky and listless from jetlag, though hooded with plain disdain. His watery gaze that clouded the amber in it seemed to find fault with everything they saw, the disgruntled grimace to his lips rising into a sneer every few moments.

Vin's attire perhaps played a role in his sour mood. Ryosuke had demanded they proceed directly to Ishinomori Tower and Kaede after his and Vin's flight from Paris had touched down, giving his partner very little time to freshen himself up. Vin still had on his black suit pants, shirt, and tie, rumpled and creased now from too much wear. But his jacket that had been soaked through and then encrusted with his drying blood in one spot courtesy of a bullet graze had been exchanged for a bright red substitute, reasonably kempt from spending time in one of his suitcases though affected by having to endure the lengthy plane journey. His clothes were nowhere near his usual standards of tidiness, something that was probably feeding his displeasure further. The arrangement of his red and black garments was not so excruciating to behold either, the two colours harmonised in actual fact. Perhaps that was the genuine cause of Vin's ill temper; that his outfit was not gaudy enough.

"I mean, why do I have to deliver that book along with you? You don't need me for that!" Vin continued to protest. "What am I supposed to do, hold it too as you hand it over?" He scoffed, indicating what he thought of that idea. "And frankly Ryochan, and don't take offence or anything, but your sister gives me the creeps. There's something eerily disturbing about not ever being able to see someone's eyes…." His voice turned contemplative trailed off, and Ryosuke believed-or maybe just hoped-he would remain silent for a while keeping his thoughts to himself. But Ryosuke rarely had good luck.

"She sure is hot, though," Vin suddenly said in a faraway tone that made Ryosuke look at him sidelong past his sunglasses-warning violet. "Ah, not that I have any designs on her, you understand," he hurriedly clarified, realising what he had blurted. "Like I said, she gives me the creeps." Vin became flustered once again, an abrupt inhalation. "Not that that's really bad either!" he assured in his next breath, before sighing and calming when Ryosuke didn't react beyond turning his gaze away from him in apathy. Vin had nothing to fear from Ryosuke. He did not take umbrage at his partner's remarks; Kaede *was* creepy. But it wasn't her fault. It was *hers*.

"Then there's Dominique," Vin went on after a moment, his whining regaining its lost steam. Dominique, the person where the fault lied with. Whatever criticism Vin had to say about her Ryosuke would wholeheartedly condone and concur with. "That stuck-up bitch barely even acknowledges me! She looks at me as if she's wondering whether to plunge a knife into my guts or not. I can practically feel the point pricking between my shoulder blades when I turn my back to her. I wouldn't put it past her to casually backstab me like that, either. Feh!" Vin shook his head in disgust, scowling darkly to himself. But he then sighed in resignation, his indignation seeming to evaporate with his released breath. "I guess she's no different from most of the women around here, though. Look at them over there. Acting so high and mighty."

Ryosuke let his eyes focus on his surroundings and his mind concentrate on what they were seeing, truly registering the room around him and all of its details instead of viewing it in vague, hazy contours. It was a familiar locale to him, one he could map with his eyes shut. It was a room in his home after all; it didn't matter that his home happened to be a multi-storey skyscraper. The waiting area was as austere as the hundreds of other rooms that comprised Ishinomori Tower, piled on top of one another and making the building live up to its name. Brushed steel was the pervasive motif, also widespread throughout the rest of the tower, the walls all silvery blocks spaced with narrow horizontal recesses between. The floor was night skies streaked with lightning; black tiles shot through with white; and hard enough that boot heels clicked on it. A large reception desk sat in the first half on the room, off to the right side by the entrance with its back to the wide window doubling as a wall. It was a gentle arc of pale wood with a chrome top surface and polished finish, styled ascetically to match its stern environment. Another desk sat in the rear half of the room, the reception desk's smaller brother, adjacent to the double doors barring the way to Dominique's office. That desk was a security checkpoint, with an ebon metal locker mounted on the span of wall behind it, the container of several heavy-duty armaments that were definitely not regular corporate paraphernalia. The remainder of the waiting area was occupied with a neat layout of black leather couches and armchairs, and squat square coffee tables of the same pale wood as the security and reception desk.

In the centre of the room overlooking everything else was a sculpture cast in iron and painted slate grey, though with its coarse exterior and colour it could be misjudged as dark granite. It stood on a shiny black square base edged with dull gold; a shapeless blob on a pedestal stretching out at its onlookers. Ryosuke didn't know what it was supposed to be or supposed to represent. It was conceptual art or some such; the sort his mother used to think was fascinating and aesthetically attractive. He had never learned why. To Ryosuke, his mother's feelings, her thoughts and motivations, would always be just like that sculpture-an unfathomable chaotic mass, alien in form and feature. Beyond his understanding.

Ryosuke was also instinctively aware of everybody and anybody that dwelled in the room with him, regardless of where his eyes or mind may be. Even in one's home one should never relax their guard. But then Ryosuke's home had been infested with unwanted visitors who had taken up permanent residence. Anybody else with any sense would remain on their strictest guard too.

Ryosuke trailed Vin's discontented glower across the expanse of the room to where a soft hubbub of female voices came from. A gaggle of women dressed immaculately in what Vin called 'power suits' inhabited the rear half of the waiting area, distinctly segregated from where Ryosuke and Vin were seated with the abstract sculpture the unofficial border. The black-clad women had the gall to treat this room as their own personal lounge, a place where they could go to unwind and commune in when they did not have any pressing duties to fulfil. It was a popular haunt for most of them, perhaps because it was as close as they could get to their leader's office. That leader being Dominique, of course.

Scanning his gaze over the dozens of generally foreign women socialising demurely, Ryosuke felt the dull throbbing beginnings of a migraine drumming against the inside of his skull. There were so many of them now, dozens indeed-dozens upon dozens. Their numbers had started out tiny, five or six at most, but as the campaign against Soldats raged on they had inflated to more than a hundred, and were still rising. Over a hundred invaders in his family's home, spreading like vermin. They were all women; not so odd when considering that man-hater Dominique had done the recruiting. They were also somehow related to her, either sympathisers of their opposition against Soldats or friends of hers. Which exactly didn't really matter; it was enough to know that they were loyal only to their own flock and Dominique who headed it. They did obey Kaede's orders-reiterated through Dominique, unsurprisingly-but Ryosuke had an inkling that they complied because it suited them to do so, not out of any sense of allegiance. Ryosuke watched them with a suspicious eye, wary that they would turn upon his sister if the tide of the war against Soldats ever did.

Ryosuke had to admit that the women were frighteningly good at whatever assignment they performed, however. Be it manning the security stations guarding the most sensitive locations in Ishinomori Tower, coordinating strikes against Soldats safehouses and businesses, or participating in those strikes themselves, they did their job with cool efficiency and superior competency. Garbed in black suits like uniforms as they were and with their no-nonsense attitude towards anything they did and everyone outside their clique, the women were almost like government agents belonging to some war-torn country. Maybe they were for all Ryosuke knew.

One would think Ryosuke would be appreciative of the women's effectiveness and skill in matters of combat-especially when a small squad of the elite force had been posted as Kaede's bodyguard, in charge of her personal welfare-but his mistrust of them precluded any such laudable sentiments. He was in fact opposed to the outsiders being assigned to work so closely to his sister and functioning in so significant a role as bodyguard-it was grim as it was already, the way they spearheaded the majority of their operations to lay low Soldats instead of their own household soldiers doing the job. The Ishinomori group's forces had been demoted to menial guard drudgery and worse, fodder to bleed and be sacrificed for the benefit of Dominique's cohorts to triumph. It positively *infuriated* Ryosuke for his family's soldiers to be… *used* like that, exploited as if they were nothing more than meat shields to soak up bullets and blades, his brothers-in-arms sent off to slaughters that were completely unjustified. Losses were heavy among his brothers as to be anticipated being mistreated as they were, while those of Dominique's side had suffered less than a handful of recorded fatalities. True, her faction had the tools and the talent to utilise those tools expertly, their weaponry on par with military arsenal and the training to match, but the gap between casualty figures was far too wide. Ryosuke was losing his friends, people who had trusted Kaede and their family, people who had trusted *him*. Something had to be done. Kaede wouldn't listen; Dominique had her too wrapped around her little finger. It was up to Ryosuke. He would do something to stop the wasteful bloodshed of his brothers. Just what that something would be however, was a question he had yet to find an answer to.

The neatly dressed and primly composed women ignored Ryosuke and Vin in the commandeered waiting area for the most part; one or two of them only occasionally shooting them unwelcome frowns that suggested they go elsewhere… and soon. But the antagonistic vibes radiating from across the room at the two men were strong and glaring. Ryosuke's distinguished position in the Ishinomori group was practically meaningless to Dominique's faction; he was granted the barest respect and courtesy, with their underlying animosity for him very thinly veiled if at all. They took after their charming commander in that regard.

"No matter what I do or what I say, every single one of those women either ignore me like I'm not there and I just happen to be talking to myself, or they treat me like some mangy stray mutt nuzzling at their crotch, with a slap to my snout and kick to my ribs looming," Vin went on. "Not one, not *one* of them has ever expressed even the remotest level of interest. At first I thought I was wearing bad cologne or something, or that it was some bizarre westerner thing, but even the Asians among them behave the same. Prudes, the lot of them. And probably all celibate too, I bet. I wouldn't put it past them." He sighed once again, but it was closer to a growl of frustration. Vin wasn't accustomed to his fine looks and overt but entrancing advances flopping, and flopping so awfully at that.

Vin sullenly averted his bleary eyes from Dominique's black uniformed storm troopers, tearing them away with such force one would think they had been stuck. "I hate this place," he muttered to himself under his breath.

The gleaming chrome doors that led to the hallway outside the waiting area swung open smoothly and silently on their well-lubricated hinges, admitting a man and increasing the male population in the room, though still leaving them hugely outnumbered. However, Ishinomori Tower's total inhabitants tipped tremendously in favour of the fairer sex lately.

The man's entry drew the deadened violet eyes of Ryosuke, as well as many other eyes he expected, eyes with less than hospitable sheens to them. But the man ignored them all and the women they belonged to, zeroing in on Ryosuke instead. With a distracted wave of his hand he forestalled the receptionist's approaching inquiry, her mouth that had been open with the words on the tip of her tongue snapping closed belligerently. The woman staffing the reception desk threw a miffed glare in his direction, but all it met was his disinterested back. This seemed to anger the receptionist even more, the man leaving her fuming wordlessly. She wasn't a member of Dominique's faction; dressed instead like a typical office lady, but the black swathed militants had that sort of affect on a lot of the other women in Ishinomori Tower. Their enmity was apparently infectious.

The man was Ryosuke's age yet seemed older, more worn-rougher around the edges. Although he was dressed in a suit and shirt, navy and inky blue respectively, he had that certain look about him that betrayed a harsh background-he was no cultured gentleman. That his clothes were slightly slovenly on his scrawny frame didn't improve his image; his shirt was hanging out over his pants and unbuttoned a little too far down from the collar, displaying a gold chain-like necklace looping low on his bare chest. More gold jewellery sparkled on his fingers and wrists, heavy rings and heavier thick bracelets, gaudy enough to be on par with Vin's fashion sense and the rings bulky enough to lend extra power to his punches; knuckleduster equivalents. He looked like a thug who would always be a thug, a gangster right down to his bones, and one who could talk more fluently with his fists than he could with his mouth. A gangster who would probably *prefer* to talk with his fists.

And the people who thought that would be right. Ryosuke knew this man-Ken Ushijima. He was old school yakuza, and a comrade from the Kanagawa Kotetsu. A brother. A friend.

Ken nodded to Vin in greeting, a greeting ignored by the still surly man, and then inclined his head to Ryosuke. "Aniki. I heard you were back," he said, standing before the couch where Ryosuke and Vin sat. "It is good you made it home safe."

Ryosuke looked up at Ken through his sunglasses for a moment, and then dropped his eyes again, staring ahead into space. "I see nothing has changed here," he remarked softly, bordering on resigned.

"No, nothing," Ken said, his voice joining Ryosuke's in its resignation as he cast a look at the women mingling quietly together on the other side of the room. He rubbed a hand over his near-bald head, his hair buzzed down to a black layer of fuzz. Ken was old school yakuza, but not old school enough to sport a punch perm. "More come every day, squeezing themselves into our group and squeezing us out. It's hard to have a say in operations when everybody we have is a bloody grunt."

Ryosuke didn't reply; nothing really had changed. "How is Kaede? I thought you and the rest would be with her." There was a hint of dangerous reproach in his voice.

"Relax, aniki. Kumicho is pretty much the same as usual, as far as I can tell," Ken reported while searching through his pants pockets, finally pulling out a torn and crumpled packet of cigarettes. "You know she's tough as… heh, steel."

"Sister complex…." Vin muttered, eliciting a glance and a smirk from Ken. Ryosuke ignored them both. They didn't have any sisters.

"You being away made her kinda edgier, but that's all," Ken continued, tapping a cigarette partway out from the packet against his opposite hand. "Kumicho hasn't taken part in any big offensives while you were gone either. Gutting the odd prisoner is the closest she's come to any Soldats bastard. Nothing to worry yourself about." That was debatable. Ishinomori Tower wasn't the impenetrable fortress it used to be. Snakes had slithered into their midst, one in particular coiling its scaly hide around Kaede and whispering in her ear with its forked tongue. Nowhere was totally safe. There was always cause to worry.

Ken brought the packet of cigarettes to his mouth and tugged the protruding one free between his lips. The receptionist, who had been watching his, Ryosuke's, and Vin's every move in the manner of a school teacher watching troublemaking students and waiting for them-expecting them-to do something 'inappropriate', cleared her throat noisily and meaningfully behind him before tapping a fingernail against the 'no-smoking' sign on window frame by her head with pointed clicks, a tight smile on her face as though she enjoyed her preconceptions being validated. A couple of Dominique's supports who stood the closest to Ryosuke and his comrades, previously chatting by the sculpture, also turned sharp looks at Ken and his cigarette, hands going sternly to hips or arms being folded crossly.

Ken, frozen with his cigarette held in his pursed lips, first glanced over his shoulder at the intolerant receptionist and then to his right at the bad-tempered women, his eyebrows raised and his brown eyes bugging out a bit, obviously realising his faux pas but seeming unsure what to do about it… or perhaps unsure what his critics would do. A diehard gangster he was, but he was in the midst of questionable allies-potential enemies more like-on virtually hostile ground. And unlike Vin, Ken had great respect for the opposite sex. Too much some would say, but it was true he was a gentleman in that respect despite his shady life.

Ken reached slowly for his cigarette with his left hand, the hand not holding the packet, taking it tentatively out of his mouth as though any quicker motion would bring down the women's devastating wrath upon him. The metallic clicks of Ryosuke flipping open his silver lighter and then thumbing forth the flame pre-empted anything else, attracting the surprised stare of Ken as well as the livid glares of Dominique's two supporters. Ryosuke held out the lighter to his brother; a torch to rekindle his spirit and a hand to steady his nerves. Ryosuke would be damned if he'd let one of his own show frailty here, for dozens of Dominique's allies to see.

Following a brief instant of hesitation, Ken wisely availed himself of Ryosuke's proffered lighter and lit the end of his cigarette. He took a somewhat cautious drag from it, eyeing the women next to the sculpture dubiously. Judging by their incensed expressions, the gaijins were affronted by the blatant exhibition of insolence yet held their spiteful tongues, settling for hurling fiery daggers through their eyes at Ken and Ryosuke. They wouldn't raise an objection or move to enforce the violated policy while Ryosuke, a blood relation of the Ishinomori family, was in attendance with the infractor. It didn't matter that he had instigated the infringement; his station did permit him some limited personal freedom. The respect of Dominique's followers at least extended that much, though it was often just for show. As soon as Ken was separated from him the women, including the bold receptionist, would likely swoop upon the gangster like a flock of ravenous vultures.

"Ah, thanks aniki," Ken said in a puff of smoke that wafted above Ryosuke and Vin's heads. The cigarette was held between the fingers and thumb of his left hand, but his pinkie finger stayed rigid, sticking straight out as if the cigarette was a delicate bone china teacup he was elegantly sipping from. Looking intently, one could tell that the skin tone of his little finger didn't quite match the rest of his hand-just a tad pinker shade. In addition the finger's texture looked too smooth, lacking the soft and subtle dimples and wrinkles of supple flesh. Ken's left pinkie finger was a prosthetic, a memento of a debt paid to the kumicho of the Kanagawa Kotetsu for a weakness of character years ago. The failure was unimportant now; amends had been made, the issue resolved. The Kanagawa Kotetsu was disbanded anyway, the old bosses dead, in prison, or simply gone, nowhere to be found. It was the same for most of its members.

A stickler for honour and tradition, Ken hadn't wanted to attach a false finger to the stump that had remained after he had tendered the digit as compensation. Ryosuke knew the missing finger had been a reminder of his disgrace, the shame something not to be hidden but endured and remembered so that the failing may never be repeated. Ken was yakuza through and through. But appearing to have all of his fingers intact at least at initial inspection improved his ability to blend in; the absence of a pinkie-and one that had been so cleanly amputated-was normally an accurate indication of an individual's history being intimately entwined with a yakuza clan, a history disreputable in the eyes of the general public and those aligned with law and order. Sometimes advertising a yakuza affiliation, past or present, plain for any eye to see was not desirable.

"Second-hand smoke polluting my lungs," Vin mumbled petulantly to himself as Ken's cigarette smoke blew over him, his head turned away from Ryosuke and his partner's old friend. "Inconsiderate jerks all around me. Cancer's going to kill me faster than any bullet will. Hmph." Ryosuke supposed Vin was on the women's side when it came to the no-smoking regulation.

"The rest of the guys are around," Ken said to Ryosuke, either not hearing Vin or pointedly taking no notice of his belligerent mutterings. "On a break, I guess you could say." He sighed wearily, smoke clouding the air in front of his face. "Can't get real close to kumicho when she's here in the tower anymore." Ken tossed his head to the right, towards the other half of the room that Dominique's soldiers occupied. "Those women that are always near her have been clamping down, freezing us out. I basically just shadow them where I can. But at least a couple of us go with kumicho when she leaves the tower, and stick damn close. You know we'd never let her out of our sight then. There's nothing those women could do to stop us protecting our kumicho outside the tower short of putting a couple dozen bullets in us."

Ryosuke merely nodded. Not all the ex-members of the defunct Kanagawa Kotetsu group where dead, in jail, or missing. Those that had decided to throw in their lot with the Ishinomori family following the group's seizure of Yokohama and virtually all of Kanagawa prefecture after it had gravitated to Ryosuke, looking at him as their boss, though their official leader was Kaede. There weren't many of that core left now, the numbers dwindling as a result of fatal clashes with Soldats operatives and suicidal stratagems imposed by Dominique and her lieutenants. The scant few that had evaded such a fate thus far were Ryosuke's closest comrades, some of his best friends from his former yakuza clan, and the men that he had appointed to guard Kaede with their lives. This put them at constant and caustic odds with the squad Dominique had assigned to supposedly protect Kaede, the two sides vying to be the chief holders of that responsibility. It was a struggle Ryosuke's men were slowly giving ground on, slowly but surely being pushed into the background and away from Kaede more and more. Kaede, for her role in the affair, was non-partisan, behaving like all the people who comprised her bodyguard were trivial annoyances she had to live with. Ryosuke had tried to influence her in supporting their old yakuza brothers, citing that they were drastically more trustworthy. But Dominique, as always, had his sister's ears first and foremost… and covered them when she wanted to.

Ryosuke cocked his embittered gaze towards the doors of his nemesis's office as one of the two cracked open, another foreign woman in a black suit slipping quietly into the waiting room. She took a second to spot Ryosuke and his company across on the other side of the room, and then immediately proceeded straight towards them, weaving between her fellow soldiers that littered her path. The woman came to a halt on Ryosuke's left, next to the black leather couch he and Vin were sitting and lounging on respectively, purposely standing an ample distance away from Ken. A hand when to her hip and she raised her chin haughtily, literally peering down her nose at Ryosuke.

"Lady Kaede will see you now," she notified him, her scornful tone suggesting that she thought it chore to tell him and that his sister was being entirely too charitable, as if he was an impertinent lowbrow commoner stubbornly seeking audience with a queen. It rolled off Ryosuke's back however, stoicism the only thing he bared. The contempt conveyed towards him from Dominique's supporters wasn't anything new, and his daily exposure to it had numbed him. Let them and their commander do their worst.

"Well, it's about time!" Vin spat as he sat up on the couch, his arms unfolding from behind his head and his legs uncrossing, feet stamping on the floor. He was obviously no follower of stoicism. Vin bent forwards in his seat while he glowered at 'Kaede's' messenger, his forearms on his knees. "We've been waiting for fucking ages! I thought you'd left us here to rot!" It wouldn't have shocked Ryosuke if that were actually the case.

The woman smiled thinly at Vin and his berating; a falsely-and scarcely-civil smile that hid fury behind it and promising vicious reprisals later… if she had the nerve. While Vin was seen as an even lower form of life in the Ishinomori group than Ryosuke, Dominique's soldiers were presumably wary of his capabilities since they had never made a hostile move against him. Yet, at any rate. His partnership with Ryosuke probably also benefited his position, though doubtless not very much when bearing in mind where the eldest Ishinomori family relative ranked in the soldiers' estimations.

The messenger stepped to the side, turning and flourishing an arm out in invitation for Ryosuke and Vin to go ahead of her. The light from the expanse of window opposite caught something silver on the collar of her black suit jacket, a shining star dazzling on the blanket of dark. The tiny blades of twin swords flashed, light shimmering down their lengths. The star was the badge that Dominique's co-conspirators had the habit of wearing without fail during all the times Ryosuke had seen them, a telltale sign of their despicable allegiance; disk-shaped with the insignia of two women kneeling in front of one another and brandishing upright double-edged swords that knights from the European middle ages once plied.

The sight of the emblem jogged Ryosuke's memory, the flash of worked metal a flash in his mind, the silver crest becoming a brown embossment on old cracked leather. His right hand reflexively went to his chest, over his heart and over the book stowed inside his overcoat. Ryosuke should have recognised it sooner; the pins Dominique's soldiers showed off was the same as the design imprinted on the front cover of Langonel's Manuscript. Not for the first time he reconsidered his decision to hand over the tome to Dominique. If it weakened Soldats somehow that was all well and good, however if it came at the cost of Dominique and her faction being strengthened…. But to present himself empty handed before Dominique and Kaede would be perilous; the cunning gaijin would certainly use his perceived failure to further corrupt his image in his little sister's eyes. Dominique had craftily exploited the weight of her word to promote the importance of Langonel's Manuscript to Kaede, meaning that the younger woman now wanted it too. And Ryosuke was loath to disappoint his sister. He was trapped and he knew it, his choice no choice at all. He couldn't afford to relinquish any more footing in Kaede's heart to Dominique's stranglehold; he had to dig his heels in and retain every shred of purchase he had. To have any more wrenched away from him was to lose his sister's heart completely to Dominique.

Vin hauling himself ungainly to his feet and then curtly shouldering by Ken cleared Ryosuke's mind of the metallic flash and its implications, his partner's morose griping, too low to actually hear, also playing its part. With the laid-back way Vin moved one wouldn't believe he had been winged in a gunfight some long hours past, the scathing bullet providing basis for the term 'close shave', having ripped by a little too near to the gangster's body and scoring a gash in his flesh. A hasty provisional patch-up job in a restroom of Charles de Gaulle International Airport had apparently been enough to stanch the wound if not the pain, but Vin had not brought up his injury since. Ryosuke had been relieved his partner hadn't been more seriously hurt. It would have been… problematic.

Ryosuke got to his feet after Vin, standing slowly up to his full height like an awakened behemoth or erected ebon monolith, towering over everybody else around him. With pounding strides and a faint chinking of steel he traversed the minefield of women ahead of him, his compelling presence still sufficient enough to carve a route through otherwise immovable beings, Vin trailing dourly at his heels and the messenger marching arrogantly after them both, a swagger in her step.

Ryosuke turned an eye over his left shoulder, past Vin and the escorting soldier and through the black forest of prospective backstabbers, back to where he had left Ken. As he had predicted, the forest had expanded, putting out branches in his wake. Three of Dominique's supporters penned Ken, his lit cigarette the flame for these moths. Ken disgustingly folded fast under their pitiless frowns and demanding postures, a rueful grin on his sheepish face while he stubbed out his crime on his prosthetic pinkie and then bent the cigarette with his thumb. Ryosuke doubted his old friend would be waiting there, alone in a gathering place of their rivals, on his return.

Nearing the doors to Dominique's office, which would then in turn lead to Kaede's, another black business suit clad woman sitting sophisticatedly yet casually on the edge of the security desk flanking the office entrance slipped off her perch to bar Ryosuke and Vin's path. "You are familiar with the procedure," she half-questioned levelly while the soldier who had marshalled the two men took up position by her side, folding her arms firmly with a conceited smirk on her face, bolstering the doors' blockade.

Familiar with the procedure Ryosuke and Vin were; it was a procedure that rankled them both, insolent and unwarranted for the likes of them with their exalted stations. Moving to one side, over to the security desk under the watchful eyes and smug looks of the soldiers-turned-sentries, they began relinquishing their arms, each dumping the weapons into a waiting tray. Some weapons, at any rate. A knowing look passed between Ryosuke and Vin after they were done, the trays containing no more than a couple of armaments; the primary weapons that they were known to carry. There were no metal detectors to go through-or for the special qualities of Ryosuke's coat to play havoc with-here unlike in more travelled areas of the tower, and the guards were disinclined to pat the men down. Ordinarily the sloppy security measures 'safeguarding' Kaede's place of work would enrage Ryosuke, however in this case it permitted him to circumvent Dominique's draconian regulations that unjustly applied to him. His signature revolver was gone as was his piano wire, but there were a lot more weapons still secreted about his person, stowed away inside his black overcoat. He knew for fact it was the same for Vin; his comrade's pair of Beretta elites lay in the tray, except that was a mere tiny fraction of the weapons he kept close to his body. As rankling as the 'no weapons' policy was, it didn't come near to as rankling as it could have been.

Satisfied, the guard who had reminded Ryosuke and Vin of the rules to entering their leader's and Kaede's offices ushered them onwards with a bored dismissing wave before parking herself on the security desk again, furrowing her brow at her nails. In the meantime the other woman opened one of double doors and held it in place, giving a shepherding wave of her own; an impatient wave. Not wanting to wait any longer than they already had anyway, Ryosuke and Vin were only too willing to comply, the latter man in his foul temperament violently shoving the door that was still closed open, sending it flying as he cleared his path.

The two gangsters trudged from one side of Dominique's empty office to Kaede's office on the opposing side briskly, a somewhat anxious quiet around them once the soldier had shut the doors behind them, shutting out all but the most animated chatter going on in the waiting room in tandem, shrinking it to a soft droning of minimal waxes and wanes. An expectant atmosphere saturated the office, the air tingling, electric; an atmosphere where breaths were held and hearts quickened. Ryosuke's feet couldn't get him to Kaede's office doors fast enough.

Consequently Ryosuke was the one to barge through doors this time, the thump of his impetuous hands slapping against them as he flung away the obstructions his announcing knock. He knew Kaede would not be by herself, and he did not reserve any etiquette for the usurper she would be in the company of. He could impart just as little courtesy towards Dominique as she and her minions did towards him.

And sure enough Ryosuke's nemesis was right by Kaede's side as near as could be, all but rubbing his nose in their familiarity as if she had arranged it so he would burst in to behold it at that precise moment. His sister sat behind a broad desk at the far end of her spacious office, papers of all kinds and sizes ranging from report portfolios to huge blueprints strewn haphazardly across it with a good number having fallen on the floor. Behind the desk beside her, actually leaning over her with a hand clapped intimately on her shoulder, whispering full red lips by Kaede's left ear and long dark locks but for a tress of silver spilling over the younger woman's chest, was Dominique.

Upon Ryosuke's brash entrance Dominique's turned her attention to the office's doors, and her hushed lips curled upwards into a self-satisfied smile at the sight of him. She took her time in straightening, but her hand stayed where it was comfortably on Kaede's shoulder, a representation and reminder of the 'guidance' she endowed her protégé with. Guidance. What a joke. It was more akin to the puppeteer's hand steadying her puppet. By rights Kaede should be sitting on Dominique's lap, being bounced on the gaijin's knee.

Ryosuke's brusque pace had stuttered facing the loathsome scene, but he and it recovered swiftly, the man averse to let Dominique see how her closeness to Kaede impacted him. Vin traced his step a couple of feet behind him, walking into the office with a laboured attempt to act nonchalant, an attempt that as a result fell short of passable. His gait was too stiff, his footfalls too heavy and feet dragging with reluctance, and his eyes darted everywhere except where he was going. Vin was clearly uneasy, probably sensing the antagonistic ambiance he had to be aware materialised whenever Ryosuke and Dominique came into proximity with each other.

Kaede's office was big, more in common with a living room in size and furnishings. There was a bar complete with stools in one corner and a lounge set in another, the latter with a gigantic black wood cabinet against the wall opposite that was home to a media centre. All of the furnishings were in drab shades, be they black like the cabinet or chrome like the trimmings of the bar. Yet not everything was dull. Paintings hung on the silver walls; vividly coloured though what they depicted with their strange groupings of geometric shapes or unruly masses of lines and swirls was anybody's guess. Vases, statuettes and other ornaments decorated the room, some of the most attractive curios given spots on pedestals or small tables.

As brightening as these decorative endeavours might have been in the past, now they were layered with dust and melancholy. The vases that had once contained fresh flowers of vibrant yellows and reds, whites and pinks, were all empty. The lustre of silverware and gloss of ceramic had faded. The knick-knacks and pictures were leftovers from Hikaru Ishinomori's days; this had been her office before her passing. It was as though the room was dying slowly, following after its previous owner, its lingering beauty decaying a bit more each day. Kaede had done nothing to change the décor, adding nothing and removing nothing; touching nothing but the desk, and allowed none but those she was close to permission to step foot inside. Ryosuke wasn't sure whether to be grateful for her yearning to cling to the past or to lament it. It… hurt… seeing their mother's things placed as they had been while she was alive, and it hurt seeing them wither from her absence. And it hurt that he didn't know why she had chosen such items to decorate her office with, why she had liked this painting or why she had liked that urn. Kaede had ultimately spent more time with their mother than Ryosuke had; she knew and understood her better than he. Sometimes he wished… he wished…. What did it matter. Most of his wishes were regrets, and the sort that could not be reconciled. Just those responsible made to pay.

"Ryosuke, dear boy, you have returned!" Dominique gushed with false elation and relief, the smugness in her smile replaced by feigned delight. The glanced at Vin and sniffed derisively, the feigned delight vanishing for an instant in lieu of disapproval. It had been worth bringing Vin along just to provoke such a response from Dominique. For his part, Vin, immersed in his charade of casualness, didn't appear to notice her allergic reaction to him.

"Big Brother!" Kaede squealed excitedly, evidently taking no insult at Ryosuke's rude arrival. But then she was forever sweetness to her brother, childlike in spirit and demeanour at the mere sight or mention of him. While it could be said it was an improvement over fervour and fury, seeing Kaede like this brought its own brand of pain. However, for the moment at least, the sight of his sister made contentment and relief well up in Ryosuke's chest, drowning the dark thoughts concerning perverted innocence and devastated family ties. For now he was simply glad to lay eyes on his beloved little sister-glad to be home.

Holding stoicism in his heart and retaining it over his features as usual, Ryosuke walked across the ash-coloured carpet, the pile from the doors to the desk flattened by countless feet that had treaded there before. He stopped a metre or so from the desk-Kaede's desk now-and Vin stood adjacent to him on his right, his partner's gaze still avoidant, the two of them in line with the private elevator on the right-hand wall that was used to travel conveniently between the CEO's office and the rest of the tower, specifically the living quarters upstairs. Kaede quivered in her high-backed chair at their-or rather, Ryosuke's-approach, smiling gaily, and the tall gangster believed she would be bouncing in her seat if not for Dominique's restraining hand on her shoulder. The grip of that hand seemed to tighten as Ryosuke and Vin neared, well-manicured nails almost threatening to dig into Kaede's flesh.

"I trust the operation went smoothly?" Dominique probed in her cultured tones that persisted even when speaking Japanese, a tinge of menace entwined with the civility that warned of reprisals if she didn't like the answer

"No," Ryosuke deadpanned despite the caution, glaring harshly over the rim of his sunglasses at the French woman. "It did not."

"Yeah, it was a fine thing you did telling us to call ourselves Noir!" Vin suddenly burst out with, his eyes most definitely on Dominique now. The amber in them smouldered, looking like molten syrup. "It nearly got our heads blown off when the *real* Noir showed up!"

Ryosuke spared a guarded glance at Kaede, gauging the effect his partner's anger at her close confidante had on her. She was known to defend Dominique passionately, with violent retaliations the most common method. However in this instance Kaede appeared unperturbed, simply sitting there in her chair with that happy smile on her face. Lucky for Vin.

"Oh?" Dominique remarked, her eyebrows rising and the hand not laying claim to Kaede going to her chest in theatrical surprise. "I was unaware that they still existed, let alone were still living in Paris." She smiled, though it was more of a smirk. "But it couldn't have been that bad, now could it? You are both here, standing before Lady Kaede and myself looking none the worse for wear, may I say."

"Hey! I got shot!" Vin exclaimed, one hand heatedly flinging open the right side of his suit jacket while the other flailed animatedly. He gritted his teeth, growling in his throat as burning eyes shot flames at Dominique. Then all of a sudden his ire melted away, his expression becoming meditative and his gaze heading skywards, to the ceiling. "But it did set up a meeting between me and that blonde woman," he said much more amicably, and seemingly to no one in particular. "Did I ever tell you I have a thing for blondes?" Vin's usefulness in this situation had come to an end.

"Your abrupt stroke of insight regarding the whereabouts of the book was fortuitous," Ryosuke said, suspicion paramount. "A pity it hadn't come sooner. It would have expedited the… errand."

"I have my sources," Dominique replied, her smirk perhaps a touch fuller. "Sometimes they work fast, sometimes they do not."

Tired of sparring with Dominique, and tired of her deft ripostes at every turn, Ryosuke strode forwards a step, pulling out Langonel's Manuscript from inside his coat, and then dumped it unceremoniously on the desk with a jarring thud that rattled the writing utensils atop it. "There," he stated coldly, stepping back to his former position. "Your book."

"I knew you would do it, Big Brother!" Kaede commended as if she truly never had a doubt in her mind, before leaning out of her seat and across the desk to peer at the tome through her bangs.

Dominique bent forward in conjunction with Kaede, her eyes visibly growing bigger and lighting up at the sight of the book, emeralds polishing to a luminous gleam. She traced the emblem on the front cover with her gaze, Ryosuke watching it move along every line. For that brief moment until she stood straight once again Dominique's pretences vanished, her expression nearly matching Kaede's ingenuous face. Ryosuke wondered if he had made a terrible mistake giving her Langonel's Manuscript. Too late now, and what was one more regret.

"Good… good," Dominique said somewhat breathlessly, her left hand unconsciously smoothing over her skirt. "Now, I imagine you are weary from your trip," she said, back to her old self. "I suggest you both go and rest." The dismissal was clear. She had what she wanted.

"Awww!" Kaede moaned, turning in her chair to look up at Dominique next to her.

"Now, now; we have discussed this," Dominique retorted to the whining, smiling patiently down at Kaede, her hand rubbing the younger woman's shoulder. The easy rapport made Ryosuke's stomach churn and bile sear the back of his throat. "You can see your brother after he rests."

Kaede pouted, but nodded in half-hearted acceptance. "I'll see you in your suite later, Big Brother," she said disappointedly.

Vin was already making a beeline for the exit when Ryosuke turned around to leave also, Dominique having put a hex on him spending any private time with his sister for at least several hours. It was really nothing new, but after so long being apart from Kaede the pill was especially bitter to swallow, bleeding acid all the way down.

Ryosuke suddenly halted halfway to the doors of the office, his head angling slightly back towards his left shoulder. "One more thing. Two more, in fact," he declared grimly. "Noir… they are still alive. And they want that book." He then carried on the remainder of the distance to the doors, hoping he had stuck a thorn in Dominique and that the wound, however small to begin with, would fester. As for himself, the two young ladies who made up Noir were present only in the farthest reaches of the back of his mind. Ryosuke had more pressing concerns.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Pretty much a plot mover and character developer/introducer. Apologies again for the absence of Mireille and Kirika! But it was necessary, I swear! I couldn't help it! T_T

Uwagi, Gi = Uguu, how to describe this… it's a top. Sort of like a shirt. You know, like what samurai wear.

Hakama = A pleated and divided 'skirt'-like piece of clothing. Usually worn with a gi. Oh, it's like what mikos (Shinto priestesses) wear! They wear red hakamas and white gis.

Kenjutsu = Like kendo but more concerned with killing with a sword rather than it being a sport.

Kenjutsuka = Someone who practices kenjutsu.

Yukata = Summer kimono. A lighter version of a kimono. It's usually cotton, I think.

Obi = The sash that goes around kimonos and sometimes yukatas.

Tabi socks = Split-toed socks.

Zori sandals = Sandals, flat sole, with a thong. Like flip-flops, I guess.

Wakizashi = Japanese short sword. Like a shorter/smaller version of the katana.

Oni = Demon.

Aniki = Older brother, senior.

Kumicho = Yakuza boss.


	18. Return, Act II

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The eighteenth chapter. Mireille and Kirika are back! Yay!

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 18 - Return, Act II

It was a travel-weary Mireille who was waved indifferently through Customs by the bored guards at Narita International Airport, mercifully clearing that last security checkpoint without a fuss or a wait. The flight from Paris to Tokyo had neither been short nor refreshing-hours confined in an airplane's cabin at extreme altitudes seldom were-but it had at least been uneventful. The blonde assassin was grateful for that leniency. International air travel was frequently a required pain of Mireille's profession, and after so many excursions overseas and back she was inured to its rigors and tedium. However, that acquaintance didn't automatically mean her enjoyment of it had waxed at all. Rigorous and tedious air travel remained to her. The aftermath of a flight routinely imparted her with the chafing sensations of being worn-out, dirty, and dishevelled regardless of what she looked like in front of a mirror. Moreover, the longer the flight was, the more severe the sensations. She just didn't feel like herself once she was flying high in the sky, cruising at fantastic speeds above the clouds. The constant drone of turbine engines buzzing like a swarm of wasps in her head; the not-quite-right air pressure badgering her confused inner ear; the unsettlement in her floating stomach chasing away appetite-together they conspired to make her feel forever out of sorts throughout the flight and afterward a ragged wreck when she at last disembarked. Finding comfort in that environment was nigh on impossible. Even the myriad of opportunities for practice she'd had in the course of her career hadn't improved those odds one bit. But at least Mireille didn't get airsick.

To weather the unpleasantness of the latest transcontinental flight raring to suck the life out of her, Mireille had attempted to do what she usually did-sleep through the whole dreadful ordeal, obtaining peace in oblivion. *Attempted*-it was tough with the collective aggravations of air travel rendering her ill and irritable. But she always tried, and tried her best. Even though the closest Mireille could get to actual sleep was a fitful and uneasy doze, it did seem to make the time pass faster. She supposed medicating herself with a sleeping pill might aid her in her plight, but the blonde wasn't keen to resort to drugs for any ailment unless absolutely called for. Mireille alleged that too frequent usage lowered the drug's effectiveness, thus when the remedy was urgently needed it wouldn't perform as well as it could. In the Corsican's line of work, where injury to one's person had the potential to manifest severely and regularly, that was an important factor to take into consideration. However, that being said, while suffering through seeming never-ending flights like the recent one from France to Japan Mireille did review her medication policy with a rather bitter attitude.

The manner in which Mireille stalked out of Customs and down the final stretch of empty floor to gate seventeen's exit was in conflict with the toll the fatigue and discomfort stacked upon her during the journey had exacted from her mind and body. She marched as though grim purpose fuelled her heavy but quick steps, one boot rapping sharply in front of the other and her hips rolling haughtily from side to side with each efficient stride. The assassin's weariness strained her visage into a harsh, no-nonsense scowl, her sandy eyebrows drawn down to her wrinkled brow and her cool blue eyes glaring, with dusky pink lips pinched together thinly. Those who turned their gaze in Mireille's direction shied it away in a hurry, her inhospitable expression surmounting the charm of her beautiful features.

All those except Kirika, of course. The undeterred girl in question walked a pace behind Mireille, tugging the blonde's trolley-like suitcase as she went. Evidently noticing her older partner's tiredness and discontent, Kirika had kindly and mutely taken charge of the suitcase after she had retrieved it from the baggage conveyer earlier, accepting the burden in addition to her own bag that was strapped across her body with its bulk resting on her hip. The extra encumbrance didn't appear to bother Kirika in any way in spite of her slender and diminutive stature, her gait easy and her expression diffident as usual. That stoic face looked as fresh as a daisy too, the stress of the plane travel apparently not having the same sapping affect on her as it had on Mireille. Not even the company of Kirika sitting in the seat next to her on the airplane had helped to mitigate the harassment of the trip's traumatic aspects on the disgruntled blonde very much.

It was a bit of a surprise that Kirika's vigour, such that it was, hadn't been so much as dented. In the periods when Mireille had temporarily abandoned her struggles to realise a decent slumber and instead pick at her meals, answer a call of nature, or concede defeat for a while and simply open her bleary eyes, she'd repeatedly witnessed her young partner wide awake and upright in her chair, idling away the hours in the air by staring out the window alongside her. Mireille had the suspicion that Kirika hadn't caught a single wink of sleep throughout the entire flight, and quite likely had actually forgone any attempt to catch some outright.

Mireille hadn't probed the quiet girl on her suspected self-deprivation, believing its basis lied in her eccentricities… or was attributable to their boarding of their Soldats-sponsored flight to Japan in the first place. The former Mireille could simply accept as characteristic Kirika oddness; peculiar behaviour warranting no more than an indulgent smile and wry shake of her head; but if the latter had been the truth then a stilled tongue and blind eye was the significantly less amused order of the day. Kirika's solemn countenance did look heavier with gloom than was normal for her, the demons that plagued her mind and the ghosts that haunted her heart appearing to distance her further from the world around her, the tortured girl's permanent state of distraction more obvious. It was liable that at least one of those distractions owed its origins to her and Mireille's decision to play Breffort's game and comply with his 'counsel' advising they come submerge themselves in the bloody feud between Kaede Ishinomori and Soldats. Indeed, Kirika's heightened despondency and preoccupation had initially been exhibited on that last morning in their Parisian apartment, just as they were preparing to embark on the odious excursion. Mireille was fully aware that it was difficult for a troubled mind to attain solace in slumber. Even if sleep did embrace you in its lulling arms, sometimes the darkness in the world of the waking that you were trying to escape from followed you.

Whichever the reason for Kirika's shunning of sleep on the airplane, it meant Mireille had stayed a silent observer to her partner's actions, or lack thereof as was the case. The averse decision to depart their safe and serene home-safe and serene for the short term at any rate, if Breffort's warnings were to be trusted-for the urban battleground in the Far East and wade into a bitter conflict that was not theirs, the manipulative impelling of their Soldats patron pushing them towards the fray, wasn't a choice topic of conversation for Mireille, and no doubt for Kirika either. Hence the blonde steered clear of it, opting for silence over speech when she deemed it necessary, and not daring to even bring up subjects that dwelled too near to that taboo area. The two young women didn't need to be reminded of what had been undertaken and what consequences of that undertaking lay ahead. They knew. They knew the darkness that awaited them. The path Mireille and Kirika had elected to take was black; a familiar path to them both, one they had well travelled. The decision had been made. There was no going back now; there very seldom was on that cruel and ruthless road. All there was to do was follow through on their choice, their path. To wherever it may lead.

And so far that choice had brought Mireille and Kirika to the exit of gate seventeen in Narita Airport, Tokyo, and to the conclusion of their journey to Japan; a sight for the older of the duo's sore eyes.

Mireille issued a soft, thankful breath as she passed through the gate and into the bustling airport's lobby, as though she had finally made it across the finish line after an agonising marathon. The tension knotting her shoulders ebbed with the relief, although not by much. The only tried and true remedy to loosen those stiff muscles and soothe the rest of air travel's aches was a nice, long, relaxing soak under the massaging jets of a hot and steamy shower. But at least the worst of the trip was over, and that shower was merely a swift bullet train ride away, waiting for Mireille in Yokohama and the first luxurious hotel she laid eyes on.

The lobby of Narita Airport was like any other international airport's-astir with life, a flurry of activity. Travellers came and went; boarding planes or disembarking from them; and their family, friends, colleagues, or whoever was there to see them off on their departure or greet them on their arrival made up the secondary population. It was a gateway to the rest of the world, or the final destination for the homeward bound. It shouldn't have been distinct from any other foreign airport Mireille had visited, one of many in an exhaustive and far-flung list. But it was. And not just for her alone.

Mireille's brisk trot petered out to a daydreaming dawdle, the chaotic currents of the heaving crowds swirling unnoticed around her. The last occasion she was here, Japanese soil beneath her feet for the first time in years, it had been the beginning step of an odyssey that would beget a wave of change to gradually wash though her life. A revolution and a revelation, a languishing life enriched and a traumatic past put to rest. Back then Mireille's feelings had been dubious about coming to Japan, cautious about answering a mysterious summons from a mysterious girl in a distant country. How a melody from her memory had come to be so far from her former home in Corsica and in the hands of a young Japanese girl who apparently knew her identity and the profession it was linked to had inspired the blonde assassin's wariness, but her need to pursue the slim clue to the true happenings in her past after such a long dearth of them had been motivation enough. The consequences of that decision Mireille could have never predicted… nor could her wildest dreams have ever conjured any better. She hoped that this second decision to come to Japan proved to be as shrewd as the first. If it would prove to be as fruitful….

Mireille's dawdle halted mid-step, and the blonde looked back over her shoulder to the girl tagging along docilely after her. Kirika stopped too and blinked up at her, soulful eyes searching the woman's own fond blue inquisitively for the reason behind the delay. Mireille smiled with a tenderness to match that shining in her gaze. There was no chance this trip to Japan would turn out to be as rewarding. What Mireille had returned with from that previous visit was a 'souvenir' beyond compare-Kirika, the young Japanese girl who had lured her overseas to begin with. Kirika had been the catalyst if not the very cause of all the wonderful changes in Mireille's life… and those in the woman herself. It was Kirika who had brought about the revolution and revelation both, and many of each. It was Kirika who had shown her what was missing in her life, that it could be so much more, that it had the capacity for such joy although amid darkness and death. And then it was Kirika who had provided that what was missing. Kirika had taught Mireille the pain of loneliness, and then she had taught her the warmth of companionship. It was she who had awakened feelings inside of Mireille that the assassin had never believed were there, feelings that she had never thought she would experience for herself, feelings she never considered she would grow to need and adore.

It was Kirika also who had helped Mireille live with her anguished past, to move on from it… to let go. While the yen for vengeance remained a ready passion in Mireille, Kirika had shown her that forgiveness could be just as strong. And just as right. Kirika had killed her family. Tool of Altena's or not, deep down Mireille knew that was the raw truth. She could make excuses for the girl and justify each one faultlessly, as many as she liked, excuse upon excuse to defend her partner's actions. But ultimately Kirika had pulled the trigger; Kirika had ended their lives. Mireille knew that, even though she didn't like to see it that way.

Yet it didn't matter. The feelings Kirika had evoked inside Mireille still persisted, and were still entirely focused on the girl who had nurtured them to the surface. Mireille had forgiven her. Forgiven what should not have been forgiven. The blonde wondered where she would be without that lesson. She would likely have exacted retribution on Altena when she'd had the opportunity, killed her, and then… and then who knows? Perhaps her craving for revenge would have engulfed her senses and her heart, incited by one act of vengeance to do another, and she'd have then turned her gun on Kirika next; the tender, novel, feelings of affection giving way to the old, bitter, familiar feelings of malice. That was, if she hadn't already shot Kirika back in that graveyard. Suffice to say everything would be different. One thing Mireille knew for sure however was that she would be but a husk of the woman she was now, unwittingly having doomed herself to a loveless, lonely existence, and forever cursing her rash act, her horrendous mistake-trapped in her own personal purgatory. Mireille owed Kirika a great deal more than the quiet girl probably was aware of. But all Kirika asked for in return was her love. It was such a small recompense, freely given. Gladly given.

Mireille's expression softened as her thoughts did, what little remained of the hard ice in her gaze thawing in the mounting warmth that progressively pervaded it, the image of Kirika reflected in the bright, shimmering blue. Her aches and fatigue grew fainter, her body's grumbling distant, melting away with the cool assassin and leaving just the woman. A woman in love. Perhaps Mireille had discovered another cure for the pains of air travel.

One corner of Mireille's mouth curled higher, her smile a wry smirk now, and she shook her head gently. She certainly seemed to be a changed person. Forgiveness over vengeance, love over hate, and not to mention her frequent smitten musings. The blonde reminded herself to be careful. A soft heart, a warm heart, was very vulnerable, an easy target. It did not have the safeguards that a hard, cold heart afforded.

But right now Mireille saw no danger in indulging in a little sentimentality. She spun around smoothly to face Kirika proper, a hand going to the curve of a raised hip and a teasing, humorous remark on her lips; it about to be unleashed upon the prime target: her unsuspecting petite partner. However, she abruptly gave pause, bemused eyes looking to her left and right at the milling people everywhere and her parted lips drawing closed again, her tease dying on her tongue and then forgotten. It hadn't dawned on her before, the voices all around her being heard yet not truly being perceived, but the language she had become accustomed to sharing virtually only with Kirika wasn't so unique here. A tide of distinctive chatter washed over Mireille, an ocean around her, she and Kirika no longer alone in their fluency of the Japanese language but immersed in a sea of proficients; exclusive now common. It was like their private world for two was suddenly being encroached by countless, everybody somehow coming to understand the 'secret' tongue they conversed with. Mireille didn't like it. The sense of intrusion, of being beset by interlopers from all sides; the feeling of something special lost. She debated whether she and Kirika should talk to one another in French instead, at least whilst in a nation where Japanese was the native tongue.

Mireille contemplated whether Kirika was suffering a similar sense of trespass, or if the girl possessed a lesser level of import in how they communicated than she did. The woman wondered how her partner felt about being back in Japan-apt to be her country of birth-in the first place. Obviously the decision to come didn't sit comfortably with her, but did the reasons for that anxiety also include her return to the land where she used to live before partnering with Mireille?

Mireille didn't know much about Kirika's life in Japan before their meeting. She had never even thought to pry into those details before now, and Kirika, being Kirika, hadn't volunteered much more information than what she had recounted in her house following their brush with Soldats' hitmen. She had attended high school here-in Kawasaki to be exact, a city that they would be passing through on their route to Yokohama-Mireille at least was privy to. Maybe Kirika had friends in Japan? It was a slim possibility, bearing in mind how introverted Kirika was, but there could be people who knew her, or recognised her at any rate. Mireille imagined she'd find it odd if some past acquaintance of her partner's singled out Kirika from a crowd and sparked up a conversation with the girl. She was used to Kirika being the eternal stranger wherever they went, an enigma to everyone except her. Conversely, here in Japan Kirika was surrounded by her own people, walked in her own land, and Mireille was the obvious outsider. Here Mireille stood out like wheat mixed with olives, her Caucasian looks and natural blonde locks a scarcity, whereas Kirika, who had stood out somewhat in Paris, blended in, at least in the outward sense. But somehow Mireille didn't think that match of appearances made Kirika feel any more belonging than she did.

However Kirika's days in Japan had been like, Mireille didn't get the impression that it had been the most fulfilling existence. Loneliness was an affliction Mireille had not held sole claim to, nor was hers the only that had been cured when she and Kirika had united in business, life, and love.

Before Mireille could recover her slightly shaken poise or her mislaid teasing comment, her wandering gaze was coerced into centring on Kirika again as the girl leaned coolly out to her left, peeking past the blonde at something behind her. Mireille promptly turned around to see what had captured her partner's interest, her right hand stealing instinctively inside her grey coat for the reassuring chill of gun metal against her fingertips… until she recalled that her Walther P99 resided in her laptop bag, secreted away from airport security.

"Bang!"

Mireille's heart jumped in her chest and her muscles jerked impulsively, her turn met by a pistol aimed at her chest, the lack of her own weapon's availability acute. Then she realised that the 'pistol's' barrel was nothing more than a harmless pointing finger. Immediately Mireille's already sour mood curdled to a greater degree of tartness. Although her startled jolt was all but imperceptible to the naked eye, the fact that she had reacted so to a mere pantomime of a firearm was grating in its humiliation. Moreover, the voice that had sounded for the pretend pistol's discharge was very French, the accent and the language itself sounding oddly isolated in the midst of so much Japanese vernacular. It educed a sliver of nostalgia in the Corsican assassin as well, it something comfortingly familiar in an unfamiliar land; something of the home Mireille wished she and Kirika hadn't needed to abscond. It seemed a little part of the world Mireille and Kirika had left behind lingered still. Or rather, had come along with them. It wasn't the joking French tongue that additionally stoked the blonde's temper, but just who it belonged to. What he belonged to. Not all that had lingered was good.

"You," Mireille stated frigidly in corresponding French, the gentleness that had been in her eyes for Kirika expelled and the hard ice restored for the Soldats operative who had materialised.

"Me." The man Mireille recognised as Jacques, Breffort's one-time messenger, winked and cracked a smile that's edginess and unsteadiness caused it to border on a sleazy leer, and then blew make-believe smoke from the end of his literal 'hand' gun-that end being the top of his pointed finger. Like the previous time the blonde assassin had encountered him-in the deceased crime boss Richard Millet's likewise finished stripclub headquarters, 'Slick Chicks', in Paris' Pigalle; the club having met no better fate than its former owner-Jacques was dressed in the characteristic attire of a Soldats lackey; in a suit, shirt, and tie, except dark navy prevalent instead of black. His trademark black sunglasses were on display too, their old-fashioned large square frames seeming to cover much of his face like a stereotypical bandit's mask, the illusion on account of their bulk.

Mireille wondered what Jacques was doing so far from France, and in Japan of all remote places. It was too convenient a meeting to be coincidence, reminiscent of their last encounter. Like that last one it was without a doubt Breffort's machinations that were responsible for steering their paths into crossing. There was no such thing as coincidence with Soldats, Mireille reminisced.

Jacques gaily pushed himself off the wall he was resting his back against and closed the short gap between him and the pair of assassins. A black briefcase swung at his left side, its presence somewhat conspicuous. He would not have brought it to this unscheduled-from Mireille and Kirika's standpoint at any rate-meeting if it served no importance.

"Heh, I guess that's a dangerous thing to do around your type," Jacques remarked with meek wit as he approached. His slightly nervous half-grin grew in what Mireille assumed was contrition, becoming as rueful as his voice. It was a poor endeavour at apology, one Mireille favoured with no more than a dry, callous, and naturally unforgiving glower. She was conscious that she was being overly scornful due to how worn out and unkempt she was feeling, and that put together with Jacques' known ties to Soldats and the general state of affairs her and her partner were unjustly ensnared in translated to cold ire and acerbic bile for the misfortunate Frenchman. Not that Mireille cared at all. Any agent of Soldats was deserving of her contempt for the many atrocities and cruelties their nefarious organisation had perpetrated in her and Kirika's lives. Were still perpetrating.

"We weren't formally introduced before," Jacques said as soon as he came to a stop in front of Mireille and Kirika. He slouched where he stood in a transparent charade of laid-back repose, making an obvious exertion to slacken his tense muscles and keep them slack. Slight agitation wobbled through his voice on top of that, and his brown bangs were starting to adhere to his forehead with escalating perspiration-and it was barely above ten degrees Celsius outside if the pilot's information on the flight over here had been accurate, and not much warmer inside the airport's lobby. Jacque didn't appear to be faring well in the face of Mireille's obvious disdain. "Out last meeting wasn't exactly in ideal circumstances," he commented wryly.

Jacques stuck out his right hand stiffly at Mireille to shake, the woman noting its clammy palm and timorous quivering in her derisive cursory glance down at it. "You can call me Jacques. Jacques Rousseau."

"Is that your real name, 'Jacques'?" Mireille inquired deprecatingly, spurning his proffered handshake by not making even the faintest twitch of her own hand towards his. She didn't feel the need or the want to introduce herself or her partner in return, either. She was positive that Jacques was abundantly versed in her name and background, and likely in Kirika's as well.

"It is right now," Jacques retorted rather slickly, his now full and cavalier smile just as slick. But quickly the anxious agent returned as the Frenchman took his rejected hand back and wiped its sliminess off on a pant leg, trying to be discreet in his motion but failing miserably. "I'm your contact here in the Japan," Jacques went on. "He thought a face you recognised would be best." That unnamed 'he' had to Breffort, Mireille deduced. "My prior position had recently become redundant anyway," the Soldats operative added with a bit of a weak chuckle, one that cut off hastily when he saw that his audience weren't sharing in it. "Uh, I only speak a little Japanese though, so I would appreciate it if we just stick to familiar French between us," Jacques stumbled out, his gaze flicking to Kirika-who was watching him with her usual deadpan expression-for an instant. He reached up and scratched behind his awkwardly bowing head, and drew out a weary sigh. "It's going to be tough here with the language barrier. I know it," he bemoaned to himself.

Mireille's frown tightened and her expression chilled to an even colder veneer, her complexion that was pallid with tiredness bringing out the vivid winter's frost crystallised in her eyes. For Jacques to have arrived in Tokyo ahead of her and Kirika he would have been rushed indeed, given the narrow timeframe between the assassins' grudging acceptance of Breffort's proposal and their own arrival in the Far Eastern capitol. The more plausible scenario, the one Mireille judged as truth, was that Breffort had dispatched his minion *before* she and Kirika had succumbed to his scheming. It would be like him to do such a thing-the typical arrogance of Soldats.

And that impudent presumption galled Mireille. Galled her considerably. It didn't matter if her belief was incorrect; like the rest of Soldats, Breffort had more than earned her loathing already without that supplement. The further she reflected upon how he had orchestrated it so that her and Kirika's peaceful, quiet existence was no longer thus; how he had manoeuvred them into deserting their home and travel to the other side of the world to participate in suppressing the little rebellion he-*Soldats*-had on his hands; the more the Corsican fumed silently but furiously inside. Regardless if Breffort had simply been enterprising and used circumstances in Paris to serve his cause it changed nothing. The outcomes had been the same; the wrong done to Mireille and the girl she profoundly treasured the same. To wrong Mireille risked death, but to wrong she who had her love promised it. Kirika had been as happy as Mireille had ever seen her before that car bomb had propelled them into this mess; had seemed content with her calm and relaxed days spent alongside the woman. But that life had been spoiled now. Cut short by Soldats intrigue and their petty internal squabbling. The penalty Breffort would pay for his part in this would be dire. Mireille swore it. She could do nothing to fulfil her revenge fantasies and cool her boiling blood presently… but the moment would come. Breffort could only cower behind his position in Soldats for so long before Mireille's hunger for retribution burned so hot that it blazed beyond his then flimsy shield. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… and a scorned woman in love? Her wrath could make the heavens quake.

Mireille uncomfortably rolled her right shoulder and adjusted the strap of her laptop's carry bag there for the umpteenth time since getting off the plane, the strap digging sorely into the muscles near her neck-one of numerous dull and dourly endured aches that made her entire body groan for that relieving shower. Jacques' company seemed to kindle the twinges and throbs to assault her all the more, as did thoughts on Breffort and Soldats. To say that Mireille was grumpy was a severe understatement.

Jacques, witnessing her discomfort, advanced an extra pace towards Mireille, his free hand rising to reach for her bag. "Here, let me help you with some of those," he politely suggested.

Mireille retreated an according step from Jacques and gripped the strap of her shoulder bag firmly, angling her right shoulder and the luggage with it away from his volunteered hand in a dissuading show. "That won't be necessary," the blonde rebuffed in a voice as hospitable as a tempestuous artic blizzard.

"No, no; it's alright, I insist," Jacques persevered, not taking the hint from Mireille's unreceptive tone. He turned to Kirika and bent down to the shorter girl's level, a ticing smile on his face that he probably believed looked encouraging. It was closer to a smile one produced while terribly constipated. The Soldats agent gingerly gestured towards Mireille's suitcase that Kirika had propped upright next to her, one of the young yet unrivalled assassin's deceptively frail-looking hands drooped over the extended handle.

The nimble and delicate fingers of that hand curled closed little by little around the suitcase's handle whilst their diminutive owner blinked a couple of times in bewilderment at her shadowy reflection stretched over the curved lenses of Jacques sunglasses. Kirika turned her head to Mireille, the uncertainty in her eyes soliciting guidance from her elder.

But such guidance wasn't needed, or rather was already given as Mireille sidestepped in front of her unsure partner, her body a blockade to keep Kirika and Jacques' unwanted services apart. "So do I," the Corsican said with a look as grim as her voice, her gaze of piercing blue stabbing through the man's dark sunglasses to the orbs behind.

Mireille's daunting gaze must have penetrated deeper into Jacques' brain also, because he quickly gave ground before the imposing feminine wall, the Soldats agent's shoes scuffing and squeaking across the floor in his haste. He bobbed his head several times in acknowledgement, motions more akin to a fearful twitching. His right hand, trembling like a junkie in a desperate need of a fix, withdrew a cigarette from his jacket's breast pocket to be held between his shaky fingers and lifted to his mouth. The cigarette's appearance lasted for but a moment however before he suddenly grasped where he was; standing in an airport lobby where smoking was not permitted; and it vanished inside his pocket once again.

"Why are you here?" Mireille demanded to know whist she observed Jacques' jumpy behaviour. "I assume you are to escort us somewhere?" It was the only rational explanation for him wanting to lighten her and her partner's loads the blonde could fathom.

"Yes…. Yes," Jacques confirmed, nodding again but a decisive solitary dip this time, and his voice regaining its strength in the second affirmation. "To a safehouse that's been arranged for your stay. We better get moving there now. I was told the feud hasn't spilled into Tokyo's streets just yet, but who can say when it will?"

"A safehouse?" Mireille questioned. She pondered how 'safe' a house that Soldats had set up for her and Kirika, allies by the slimmest of margins separating friend and foe, truly was. The Corsican assassin would sleep lightly in that particular domicile. "Where? In Yokohama?"

"Yokohama?" Jacques parroted, screwing up his face into a grimace of incredulity. "Are you kidding? There isn't a safehouse in the entire Kanagawa prefecture that can actually live up to its claim. We've been practically forced out of the region. Yokohama was one of the first cities to give." The Soldats operative shook his now lowered head and clicked his tongue acrimoniously. "You'd be hard pressed to even find one of us in that city. If there are any safehouses in Yokohama that haven't been overrun, then you can bet the people in it won't be poking their heads out any time soon."

"Where then? Here in Tokyo?" Mireille presumed.

"A compromise between Tokyo and Yokohama," Jacques clarified, tapping a forefinger in the air at the blonde. "Literal middle ground in fact, and in more ways than you probably suspect. It's as close as we can get you to the enemy's den without you actually sleeping in it."

"Where…?" Mireille asked gravely, but the ominous prickling in the back of her mind told her she already knew the answer. She reminded herself that Soldats were the architects of coincidence.

"Kawasaki," Jacques said.

* * *

Kirika stared out of the taxicab's rear passenger seat window, her right hand under her chin cradling her weary head and her elbow propped against the window's narrow sill for support. Her sombre, weighty gaze absorbed every scrap of scenery that reflected in its reddish-brown hue as the environ of Kawasaki flashed by; gauging every road, building, and landmark with the blueprints the earliest memories she could call her own supplied; trying to make matches between them. Kirika's vantage was a literal window into the past-*her* past. Kawasaki was the place of her birth, the place where she had lived her meagre former life before it had been brightened and fulfilled by the advent of her destined partner, Mireille. It was a place the darkhaired girl had thought she had left behind never to return to. Yet return Kirika had, and old memories were stirring, reviving; roused from slumber in the dusty recesses of their keeper's mind by her coming to the city of their origin. Old memories that gave rise to vague feelings in their wake.

Vague as they were, Kirika had nevertheless experienced their like before, several times in fact. Whenever she had laid eyes upon a fragment of her then lost past; fragments too often linked to Soldats-Mireille's father's pocket watch found in her bedroom in her fictitious family home here in Kawasaki, or Chloe's throwing knives unexpectedly discovered stuck in the necks of Maurice Rubique and his police escort that first time at the courthouse back in her real home of Paris. The feelings, while sometimes not engendered alone, had at least been at the fore. The sensations had been at their most acute when Kirika had been wandering the streets of the village that had protected the Manor prior to its eradicating razing, and also whilst on the grounds and in the halls of the ancient Manor itself. It had been all encompassing then, as though Kirika was being bodily immersed in the feelings and they were everywhere around her, like a thick fog embracing her with misty tendrils of its languid swirls. Strange feelings… like a… dreaminess… a sense of the old and long forgotten, with almost hallowed undertones. They were neither good nor bad by themselves, just… melancholic.

It was quiet in the taxi; the sort of easy hushed calm that Kirika was fond of, close to resembling those she shared with Mireille in their home in Paris, if not for the extra company. Traffic was thin and the ride was smooth, the car's engine humming a gentle and soothing lullaby that floated Kirika's thoughts away on its droning tune. Talk was sparse as well, on the brink of being absent for the whole journey from the airport in Tokyo to the safehouse in Kawasaki. Kirika supposed that neither Mireille nor Jacques-the restless man the darkhaired girl remembered from his sudden appearance at Millet's headquarters-wanted to speak of anything too private in front of the taxi driver. She also supposed that her partner didn't want to speak to her too familiarly in the presence of Jacques, a man known to belong to Soldats, the organisation the blonde openly abhorred and distrusted. Things to do with Soldats usually instilled an obsessive caution in Mireille… and put her in a bad, hostile mood.

Not all signs of Mireille's close relationship to Kirika had evaporated upon the Soldats agent's appearance however, and nor was the younger yet still consummate assassin herself unconscious to the activities of those around her despite the attention she gave the window. From the rear passenger seat adjacent Kirika was awake to the subtle turns of the blonde woman's head in her direction, to the blue eyes shifting askance to favour her with appraising, watchful looks every few streets that passed by. Mireille's gaze had been on and off Kirika ever since the airport; surreptitious looks glimmering with unspoken concern revisiting their worry again and again. Ever since Kawasaki was marked as their journey's final destination and as their residence for their time in Japan.

Mireille must have been wondering what the implications of returning to Kawasaki, a place akin to Corsica for her, were having on Kirika. What Kirika was thinking; what she was feeling. Although still carefully held in check, Mireille had a lot of worry for Kirika overall. The girl realised it more now that they had gained a deeper understanding of their true connection to one another. It was because Mireille cared that she fussed; her interest was a blessed sign of her love, warming upon the heart and touching upon the soul. Kirika had not known Mireille to care about anyone else the way she cared about her. There were her associates, her friends; but the affection, if there was any shown at all, wasn't the same, even when it related to her family. Some indefinable and fundamental ingredient was missing, something that caused Mireille's normal reservation to soften and wane and free the smiling, doting, tender woman it suppressed; a woman who was a stranger to everyone else but Kirika. Kirika got to see a side of Mireille that no one else seemed to-she got to see the real person behind the canny business woman and hard-edged contract killer; she got to see the real woman behind the gun. And that woman was gentle and compassionate, and warm and loving. An angel disguised as a demon, forced to live in a world of darkness. That Kirika knew this woman defined her closeness to Mireille. It was a joyful privilege to see her, and an inevitability to love her.

Kirika would have liked to set Mireille's fretting heart and anxious mind to rest, but she didn't really know what she was feeling herself. When the city of Kawasaki had been revealed to be where her and Mireille's safehouse was situated, she hadn't reacted in any overt way. She hadn't been sure how to react or what to feel. It had been shock, but no more than a mild one spared a mere short moment of pause and surprised bat of eyelids. Kawasaki was a place filled with memory for her, but it was still just a place. A big place at that, with only a small area of it host to her past. The parts of the city she had once walked may not be anywhere near where the Soldats safehouse was. Until she could pinpoint whether or not they were anywhere near to her former home, her precise sentiments on revisiting her birthplace for the first time since leaving it would likely continue to be lost in the cloudy realm of the dreamy and melancholic.

Mireille's attention wasn't wholly enthralled by Kirika's plight, however. When she wasn't sneaking glances at her partner the blonde was spying on Jacques in the front passenger seat ahead of her with as much consideration as her position allowed, the devotion for Kirika that softened her gaze exchanged for suspicion that hardened it. The rectangular bag for Mireille's laptop and important documents sat upright by the woman's side, and while her eyes lurked on the Soldats agent her right hand laying innocuously on top of it sometimes threw off its innocence and took to faintly stroking along its opening, fingers toying with the zip. What the bag contained was too valuable for it to have been stowed away in the boot of the taxi-important documents from Breffort and the blonde's laptop-but it was also where Mireille had stored her weapon for the aeroplane trip, making it crucial luggage to remain close by. Mireille was doubtless prepared to unzip her bag and pull out her pistol the instant Jacques lived up to her mistrust.

Kirika's bag was next to her as well, the black sausage taking up the rest of the rear passenger seat space separating her and her partner. But the girl's Beretta M1934 wasn't housed in that bag. It was in its classic spot concealed inside a pocket of her parka. Kirika had swiftly transferred it from its prior location in her bag to quick reach in her pocket in the short interval supplied by her getting into the taxi before everyone else, notably before Jacques and the driver. Being inside the taxi alone whilst everyone else was outside had screened her conspicuous movements and the illegal firearm they had involved, such that neither Jacques, the driver, or even any passer-by who might have directed an idle look her way could have seen them. In the case where Jacques did perform a betrayal or antagonistic action of some kind Kirika had him covered, and could possibly react quicker to the danger than Mireille. The younger assassin had a clearer line of sight towards Jacques from her crosswise angle anyway, so she would notice any threat he may suddenly pose earlier than her partner could with her limited view. Mireille did have the better shot however, since she could simply unload her Walther P99's magazine point-blank into the back of the Soldats operative's seat.

But Jacques, for his part, wasn't doing a thing that should feed Mireille's suspicion or that piqued Kirika's, apart from him being his Soldats self. He sat pretty much motionless in the front passenger seat, only his head lolling about subject to the consistency of the road beneath the taxi's wheels. He had looked as agitated as the last time they had met when Kirika had seen him at Narita Airport, but had calmed some during the hushed journey to the safehouse. He still wore his sunglasses too, just like he had in Millet's headquarters. Kirika supposed that meant he was really tired again and was hiding dark-ringed eyes as Mireille tended to do. His job working for Soldats was probably demanding, and his hasty flight from Paris to Japan was unlikely to have helped.

Kirika had not eluded her plane trip's weakening affects either. She could never settle into a proper sleep whilst travelling by air, and consequently had decided the time was better spent peering out the jet's passenger windows at the purest and most unbridled sky she had ever seen, and watching the even grander vision of the most beautiful and entrancing woman she had ever seen in slumber beside her. Both majestic diversions seemed to really shorten the length of long flights such that hours shrunk to minutes, but naturally at the cost of relinquishing sleep, although that was a pointless endeavour anyway. Prolonged air travel hadn't always given Kirika trouble with her napping, but as her penchant for sleeping pressed close against Mireille had grown so had her dependency on it to fall asleep to begin with. The seats on an airplane were normally not favoured towards comfortable snuggling between two friendly passengers, cursing the girl's attempts to doze off peacefully for any longer than a couple of minutes. And so Kirika simply accepted that sleep was unattainable onboard an aeroplane, and embraced her aerial pastimes instead. The trade-off was well worth it. She wondered if she would have gone without sleep no matter what the case, just so she could have a longer chance to lose herself in the beauty around her.

While her admiration had exacted its tax of tiredness on her petite body, it was nothing Kirika couldn't cope with. The assassin simply ignored the fatigue and concentrated on maintaining her mind's wakefulness, enough so that her senses remained tuned to meticulous alertness and her reflexes honed to razor sharpness. Her body would follow her will's direction, shrugging off the weariness like an unwanted blanket about the shoulders when required until she could get some proper rest. Through mental fortitude alone Kirika could sustain herself, such that she could drive her beleaguered body to the brink of collapse without sacrificing a shred of its strength or speed before it succumbed.

The journey abroad didn't seem to have agreed with anybody, for Mireille displayed evidence of drowsiness too. She didn't have her sunglasses to hide her straining eyes behind, nor could she disguise the pallor of her face as anything other than the product of tiredness. For the hours she had dedicated to curling up under a blanket on the aeroplane-that being the blonde's routine procedure for long distance air travel-Kirika would have predicted Mireille to be as fresh as if she'd been sleeping in their bed at home. However, Kirika, in her devoted veneration of her snoozing partner, had witnessed Mireille fidget a lot in her seat throughout her naptime. Mireille seemed to only reap restive sleep at best on every flight they took together, which plainly didn't do much to restore her depleting energy.

Nevertheless, like Kirika, Mireille rose above her sleepiness and stayed on her guard, as proved by the watchful eye she had placed Jacques under. The built-up surroundings of Kawasaki were treated with a similar discrimination during her respites from monitoring Kirika and her Soldats nemesis, presumably on the look out for Soldats treachery that entailed waylaying the taxi. But Kirika mused whether the reasons for Mireille's curiosity in the sights weren't in addition a little parallel to her own. Mireille had met her for the first time in this city-and had been introduced to the agents of Soldats here too, as a matter of fact. The young women's fateful partnership had been forged in this place. Kirika wondered if Kawasaki had some significance to Mireille as it did to her, perhaps not rousing the same profound emotions, but cultivating some sentimental attachment nonetheless because of the history that had taken place between them in this city. She wondered if Mireille saw the past in the streets that flew by as Kirika herself did, and smiled in remembrance of their earliest encounter and time spent together. It was a nice thought.

The taxi trundled through a sedate intersection that initially seemed like any other, but as the vehicle moved further ahead suddenly Kirika was peering down a narrow suburban lane that was a reflection of the ethereal blueprints penned in her mind; a solid reflection as real as anything else around her, erected right there in reality. Kirika remembered that lane. It was long and straight and the road wide enough for only one car to drive along, and was flanked by high walls with houses on the other sides. Kirika had walked its length to the street beyond dressed in her school uniform and carrying her leather satchel on her way to and from Tsubaki High School more times than she could count. It was a path she had well worn during her old life in Kawasaki, and a marker that told her she was halfway to school… or halfway to home.

The familiar lane was gone as quickly as it had emerged into view, and it served as a marker of a different kind now. As the taxi continued on it was as though Kirika and those with her were passing through a barrier, a… portal, an intangible portal into a time long ended… into a memory long remembered. Matches for her mind's blueprints were everywhere; the streets and buildings that went by Kirika knew, each new one sighted refreshing the dated memory of it she had. It felt so surreal, as if she were drifting through a hazy dream, and the deeper she went inside it; the farther she was driven down the olden roads away from the portal entrance; the more the real world was left behind.

The fuzzy melancholy swelled inside her too, that fuzziness thickening more and more from an indolent mist into a dust-laden fog swimming with fresh eddies at every old memory's renewal; each resurgence beating a whisk through the mass and spurring it to a faster condensing churn. Wistfulness flowed as the fog billowed, as did an odd reverence for the old sights seen. They were from another life after all; a life for all its shortcomings Kirika still cherished the memories of. The taxi and Kirika with it followed those memories, tracing them back to their beginning. Tracing them back to the root of that old life-to the grave of it.

A few more familiar streets and remembered turns later the taxi rolled to a stop. Virtually consumed in a light-headed trance Kirika climbed out of the car, dragging her bag mechanically with her, her mind as mesmerised as her staring eyes. There it was. The house Kirika had awakened to the world in, the first place she had called home, where she had first spawned her own memories and lived her own life. Kirika had thought she would never see it again. As though it had ceased to exist the instant she had left it and the life she had lived in it behind, the house enduring only in her mind. But here it was, looking the same as always. Brick and mortar still stood steady, the garden still thrived in its greenery, and the property gave off no sense of abandonment. Instead it was as if the house had remained static up until Kirika's return. Stuck in time-eternal, unchanging. Waiting. It was as though she really was looking back in time, into her mind's recorded image of the past, gazing at a memory ripped straight from there and transferred to the living, breathing world. It was like *being* in the past, walking in it, walking in the very memories contained in her head. And it felt wrong. A wrong step placed, a wrong path taken. Like Kirika wasn't supposed to have ever come back. Not back to the beginning. Not back to a life already departed. It was a grave that shouldn't be disturbed.

The orange of sunset twilight streaking the sky overhead basked the house in its glow, feeding the illusorily ambiance that swallowed Kirika whole. The surrealism was at its most potent on the street in front of the young assassin's first and former home, as was the melancholy, the latter still keen in the face of the emergent sensation of wrongness. The house exuded feelings of sacredness too like the roads leading to it earlier, and as with the others they were strongest here. This house was the origin of them all, just as it was the origin of Kirika. Its history gave it its power, the girl was beginning to understand. It was a hallowed site to her because of what had occurred within its walls, because of the importance of those events and how they fit into her life. She had been born here, she had allied with Mireille here, and she had lived a life here.

It was the last that tainted the house's eminence, distorting it into something that burgeoned painful regret and woeful longing at every glimpse its way. The bulk of Kirika's memories concerning Kawasaki were weaved with such. All but the closing little fraction of her previous time in this city was borne stagnating in an empty existence with loneliness as her solitary companion, though interposed with the mundane contentment of normality… albeit normality eventually punctured on a near daily basis by the surfacing of Soldats and its aggression. The everyday routine of her life was the only thing she looked back on with some extent of fondness, her union with Mireille aside. It was lost to her now, lost with the desertion of that life, although she'd had a measly grasp of it back then anyway. Still, Kirika didn't like being reminded of that loss-it made her pine for its recovery all the more ardently-and here outside her old home the memories were at their freshest.

It wasn't the only past hurt rekindled. Within the house the ghosts of loneliness and meaninglessness awaited Kirika. She couldn't help but remember the ills that had worn on her life at its start. How they had felt. The pain of them. The ache for change. Those ghosts would haunt her inside that house. They were already starting to now. Kirika was disrupting their rest revisiting her bygone residence, evoking memories and feelings better left alone in time-fostered obscurity. They would not let her go unpunished.

This was a house of fruitless dreams and hollow lives. A house built on lies and misery. This was not Kirika's home. Maybe it never really had been.

There was breathing on Kirika's neck-serene, gentle, steady and hushed. Over her shoulder, behind her back, just shy of the corner of her eye she could feel *her*. Kirika's other self, the darkness, the voice, Altena, or whoever or whatever it was. It was there, behind her, perhaps prodded from wherever it had been skulking in Kirika's mind, silent as it was still, by the girl's trek through her memories of the past. She could not so much hear the breathing but *feel* it, *sense*it, like a mouth with lips parted and words ready on tongue.

Kirika's body tensed severely, waiting, expecting new whispers to chime through her thoughts, invade her mind, the poison commentary by a dead woman in service of a younger trapped one. But the quiet lingered on. It was there, the darkness, the voice, yet it did nothing; said nothing. In some ways it was worse. Agitating, unnerving. It was cold outside the taxi, the icy winds coming close to buffeting, but sweat slicked Kirika's forehead. It was as cold as the weather.

Suddenly there was a very real weight on Kirika's left shoulder. Panic shot through her just as quickly, and her head snapped instantly to the presence, a muted gasp blown between her lips.

It was Mireille's placid smiling face that materialised in Kirika's vision, as compassionate as it was soothing to the smaller girl. She should have known. The hand resting on her shoulder was far too tender to have belonged to something… or someone… bad. Relief came as swiftly as panic had, but poured into Kirika instead of slashing through her insides. Her knotted muscles slackened, her stiff left shoulder visibly sinking under her partner's pacifying hand.

Mireille's gentle and caring smile grew just a little bit, and she squeezed Kirika's shoulder softly. Nothing was said before the blonde let her hand drop and she turned away, moving towards the back of the taxi and its open boot to collect the rest of her luggage to go with the laptop bag dangling from her shoulder. However, the woman's message was clear. Kirika was not alone.

Mere moments had gone by since Kirika had stepped out of the taxi, mere heartbeats, but it had felt like those moments had been stretched into a whole lifetime, the past lifetime she had already lived. Her heart, which she hadn't been aware was leaping in her chest, was quieting down, and the perspiration spotting her brow was close to drying in the cool winds wafting her hair. The surrealism enveloping the house had waned, its edge dulled greatly if not altogether, the dream awakened from and the regression into the past ended, with reality and the present regaining their purchase. The invisible presence over Kirika's shoulder, the low breathing down her neck, had vanished too. Chased off by Mireille-the darkness cast out by the light, the demon fleeing before the angel. Mireille had broken Kirika free from her trance; led her out of the mire of malicious memories she had been ensnared in with a mere affectionate touch and encouraging smile. Kirika's battle with her sinister twin was her own to wage, her inner turmoils hers to surmount unaccompanied, but aid for all of her troubles was always nearby. The girl knew she could rely on Mireille and her support if she ever asked for it. However, Kirika hoped she would never become desperate enough to have need to.

Not every feeling that the sight of her old house engendered in Kirika had been expelled. They had lost part of their thrall over Kirika, but few had followed the surrealism in its fade. The same misgivings, the same sadness, hung over her like a pall as she looked upon their abode. Ghosts were not so easily banished.

Kirika shut the taxi's passenger door quietly and joined Mireille at the back of the vehicle just as the blonde was hefting her suitcase from the boot to the street, plopping it down on its wheels with a little heaved sigh of exertion. She closed the boot, and before Kirika could take it herself Mireille had dragged her suitcase over the stubborn curb and onto the pavement, all without so much as throwing her obliging partner a glance. Kirika would have happily lugged the suitcase on Mireille's behalf, now more than ever to assuage her partner's exhaustion, but the older woman usually reclaimed her luggage at the finish of a long journey. Kirika wasn't sure why she did that, nor did she have a guess as to why Mireille had repossessed her luggage so soon after landing at the airport on this trip. Customs to the taxi outside the airport was a stretch of time where the petite girl normally had her love's burden in her hands. Kirika supposed that right at this moment Mireille wanted to continue to keep any shred of familiarity they shared masked from Jacques. Or maybe that wasn't it. Sometimes Mireille was so hard to figure out when they were not side-by-side in carnage with guns in their grasps. They were Noir, connected, tied together by threads of fate, meant to understand each other's hearts perfectly… but that was just an ancient belief. Maybe it would come to be one day, when their love had prospered to its full and glorious bloom. Yes. The day would come.

The taxi drove away, leaving Kirika and Mireille and Jacques at the roadside, the last putting his wallet back in his suit pocket after paying the driver. Jacques picked up his briefcase from the footpath where he had placed it by his leg and then offered the pair of assassins an unsteady smile.

"After you," Mireille said, grim-faced once again.

"Of course," Jacques replied with coolness at odds with his nervous bearing. He walked ahead of his stony overseer and her less threatening companion and through the already open gate of the house, past the front garden and to the porch steps.

Mireille trailed after him, watching his every movement and the house that loomed at the fore with careful notice, her gaze never long from either. Kirika followed her, feet plodding, dragging like the blonde dragged her suitcase, though without the smoothness wheels endowed. The troubled girl's eyes flitted to the wall that separated the house from the street as she passed it, the topmost railing a head taller than her just as she remembered. She caught sight of the scuffed nameplate mounted on the nearest edge of the wall, near the entrance to the house. Yuumura, it said. More evidence of her old home's standstill in time. Kirika didn't believe that anybody else had lived in it after she had left. It was like this house had been made for her. Maybe it had been. Altena had commanded that kind of power.

The mailbox set on the porch was empty, showing that someone at least took care of the mail that tended to accumulate to massive proportions if you didn't clear it out frequently. Junk mail, Mireille called it. Never anything addressed to Kirika Yuumura specifically, not in all the time she had lived here. Not in all her life. The lie only went so far.

The porch light was on, shedding light on Jacques while he slid a key into the front door's lock. It was as though the light had been switched on by itself, anticipating Kirika's return. Dread was welling up in the pit of her stomach as she reluctantly climbed the porch steps, her attention glued on the door, awaiting the moment it would be swung open, letting out the pains entombed behind it. Kirika stood close to Mireille on the porch, so close they were almost touching. The girl wished they could touch.

"Here we go," Jacques announced, as if opening the door to Kirika's past was nothing. He did just that, unlocking the front door and walking into the house, then fumbling in the shadows for a light switch that Kirika knew was just next to the entrance, on the left hand section of wall.

Jacques eventually found the switch and bright light reinforced dusk's soft radiance previously bathing the small foyer and larger room ahead. Stooping down slightly and lifting his right foot up, he undid the laces of his brown leather shoe and then flicked it off to drop onto the green tiles lining the genkan with his free hand, that shoe closely followed by its mate. "This will get irritating," Kirika heard him sigh under his breath.

Mireille squeezed her way into the genkan at Jacques' back and after depositing her suitcase against a wall, began to work on removing her own footwear, unzipping her high-heeled leather boots and pulling them off her slender ankles and elegant feet, losing a few inches of height in the process. She yet retained a close eye on the nearby Soldats agent, not trusting to leave him free of watch even for these ephemeral moments.

Kirika dithered at the house's entrance. No ghosts had assailed her at the breach of the front door, only more memories of the past; of the countless times she had donned her shoes and taken them off in that genkan, coming and going across this threshold. But she feared that they might only be prowling deeper inside the rooms and halls, searching for the moment to pounce.

Mireille rose to standing once she had rather messily arranged her floppy boots at the lip of the genkan, near her similarly discarded suitcase. She looked over her shoulder to where Kirika wavered behind her at the doorway, the woman's lovely profile suddenly appearing from around the flaxen curtain spilling down her back. A blue eye of hers beckoned, and the curve of her mouth was gently persuading. "Kirika," Mireille said.

As if something had nudged her lightly but compellingly forwards, Kirika's feet shuffled from the porch outside to the genkan inside in a single timid step. Nothing awful happened, and Kirika breathed a little easier. Just a little.

Mireille spared Kirika another moment to bolster the timorous girl's nerves with her patient smile before Jacques quickly lured away her attention again as he stepped out of the genkan and into the connecting room. She tailed him, her bare feet padding mutely across the buffed hardwood floor.

Kirika put her bag down next to the wall opposite Mireille's suitcase, and then shut the front door quietly. Carefully she slipped her feet out of her pink shoes, pushing them beside her partner's boots when she was done, and then went to join Mireille and Jacques in the adjoining room. Kirika's footfalls were even more subdued than Mireille's, her socks hushing to a degree, but the young assassin's apprehension lightening her steps was the most effective silencer.

The room styled in the old-fashioned Japanese manner was the first in the house to reacquaint itself with Kirika. It was the largest room in the dwelling yet also the most sparsely decorated in accustom to its traditional vein, the lone piece of furniture a kotatsu in the centre of a span of flooring layered with tatami mats. The small, stumpy table had an ashtray on it, positioned exactly as Kirika remembered leaving it. The ashtray was still spotless as well, and Kirika wondered if it had ever been used. It hadn't been in her time here.

There were several pictures on the walls, some even high above the trim and tidy alcoves and cabinets, hanging bare inches lower than the ceiling. A few were traditional Japanese calligraphy and artwork framed for display to fit the theme of the room, but most were family photographs. Kirika's family. However, the people in them were no family that the girl knew. There was a picture of who was presumably meant to be her grandmother, a black and white photograph that looked old. Others, in colour, were of her pretend mother and father in seemingly pleasant moments, one with her encompassed in the shot. She was smiling cheerfully in it, her mouth open wide. She looked very happy. Kirika wondered how she could be like that, if the merriment was a lie too. She hadn't thought her mouth was even capable of a smile that big, or her face able to appear so trouble-free knowing the sins she was laden with. But then, Kirika hadn't made that smile. She had no memory of it or of the woman and man posing beside her in the photo. It was a smile belonging to her other self in a life that warped twin had led. It was amazing that the darkness had the capacity to show such unadulterated joy. Perhaps it-*she*-had really known their faux parents? Or was her delight really merely a fabrication?

Whatever the truth, Kirika herself felt no connection at all to any of her supposed family members. They were just strangers to her, faces no more meaningful than those belonging to passers-by in the street. Kirika didn't have a family. Parents… relatives…. These were rudiments that other people were born with. Not Kirika. She had come into this world alone. No mother's comforting embrace or father's warm smile had greeted her; no blood ties had been forged when she took her first breath. Perhaps it had been different far, far back in the past for her younger self, but that was a life belonging to another girl.

That she would never experience the love and care of a family made Kirika sad, but it was a distant, indistinct ache. How could she mourn for something she had never known? The closest Kirika had to family was Mireille. And Mireille's love and care outshined all others. Kirika didn't need a real family.

"This is it, your home-sweet-home," Jacques said as he walked to the kotatsu in the middle of the room, swinging his head to each wall in appraisal. He turned around to face Mireille and Kirika, adjusting his sunglasses with a brief touch from his thumb and forefinger. "He said you would like this place."

"It will do," Mireille replied simply, giving nothing away.

Jacques just smiled diplomatically and then sat down at the far end of the squat table, plunking his briefcase on it. "Why is this table so low?" he griped immediately afterwards. He kept rearranging his legs this way and that; sometimes crossing them, sometimes sticking them underneath the kotatsu; seeming on a tricky quest to get comfortable. But finally they stilled, the Soldats operative finding a balance with one leg bent and upright, and the other similarly bent but flat on the floor under the table.

Mireille walked to the opposite side of the kotatsu and lowered her laptop bag by its strap to the floor, alongside a table leg. She then shed her coat and tossed it over the bag before kneeling down at the kotatsu across from Jacques, tucking her legs smartly underneath herself. Unlike Jacques, Mireille had sat at this table before.

Kirika knelt beside Mireille in the same way a moment later, legs folded neatly underneath her bottom, squashing into the little space remaining at that particular edge of the small table on the blonde's left hand side, the side that wasn't occupied by her laptop bag. The petite girl didn't mind the tight fit though, and especially not the close proximity to Mireille it accorded. Their neighbouring bare thighs were almost touching, the tiny, titillating gap separating them taunting Kirika to part her legs ever so slightly or even lean a bit against her partner and close that gap. But she knew she would never do either. She would never breach that gap or any other separating them without invitation. So instead she sat there very still and straight-backed, savouring the nearness she did have with her love, while trying to forget the ghosts the house harboured.

Two simultaneous clicks snapped the stillness in the room-the house-announcing the unlocking of the Soldats agent's briefcase. Jacques' face was all seriousness now as he cracked open the briefcase, the abrupt turnaround leaving Kirika questioning if the nervous, fidgety man she had witnessed beforehand had really existed.

Kirika sensed Mireille tense beside her at Jacques' actions, the blonde's back becoming as straight as a board while her hand strayed once again to her bag next to her. Conversely, Kirika was impassive and unmoving, giving away no sign that she had seen anything potentially suspect. That by no means meant she was any less alert than her partner. If Jacques were to produce a weapon of some kind from inside that briefcase of his, Kirika would flip the kotatsu on its edge in the space it took him to hurl a knife or pull a trigger; a makeshift shield at a moment's notice. And before Jacques could follow up his initial attack with another he'd be already dead, two bullets from two guns delivering his demise.

But that violence ensued only in Kirika's head. In reality Jacques retrieved an innocuous enough stack of paper from the innards of his briefcase and dropped it with a slap in the middle of the table. He prodded it with his finger a few times towards Mireille.

"There's the information relevant to our… situation… in this region," Jacques said, nodding his head at the paper heap and then shrinking back, as if the pile were something repulsive to him. "Right now Kawasaki is the only city in this prefecture worth having that we still maintain some control over. How long that control will last…." He paused, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth. "Well, that's presently being contested," Jacques went on, flashing a dry smirk. It fell away quickly. "Kawasaki is all that buffers our primary Japanese power base in Tokyo from Ishinomori's movement. If Kawasaki falls under her sway, the capitol will be open to the brunt of her offensive straight from nearby Yokohama, and her influence in this country would be significantly increased if she should somehow manage to take it. Naturally this is undesirable. We want Kaede Ishinomori's splinter group stripped of its ability to pose a threat before our presence in Kawasaki has a chance to wane, and before the authorities governing Tokyo can become perverted to her cause."

"And we are to do that? We're not here to win your war, or at your convenience for that matter," Mireille stated coldly. "We'll see to Kaede Ishinomori if that is what it will take to prove to Soldats we are non-aggressors in this. But that's all, whether it derails your revolt or not."

Jacques cleared his throat uncomfortably, the jumpy man resurfacing. He squirmed in his spot on the floor, laying his right forearm across his upright knee with forced casualness, and then nodded his head in a slow show of prudent surrender. "As you say. Any assistance you provide will be valued."

The Soldats operative's right hand drew back to his jacket pocket over his heart seemingly of its own accord, bony fingers absently starting to pluck free the cigarette that had made a short appearance before at the airport. The cigarette peeking halfway out of its home, Jacques nodded his head at the ashtray on the table. "Do you mind?"

"Yes," Mireille declared without possibility of negotiation. She hooked a finger over the rim of the ashtray and then unceremoniously dragged it from the middle of the kotatsu to near her, well out of range of Jacques' cigarette if he should unwisely choose to light it.

Jacques coughed nervously a second time, covering his mouth with his fist after discreetly pushing the cigarette back inside his pocket. "Like I said, I'm your contact within Soldats forces here," he proceeded with a decrease in aplomb. "Your *sole* contact. I'm the only person in the whole of Japan that knows you are working for us, for Soldats. You understand; you are regarded as rather like outlaws to us. Taboo. Your relationship with our mutual employer cannot be broadcast. It would… cause problems."

"We are working *with* you. And I know. We don't expect any real help from you because of that either," Mireille said, her words with a bite to them. Kirika wasn't sure why that incensed her partner so. The darkhaired assassin was sure that Mireille preferred working alone anyway, just the two of them. Kirika liked it that way too. She had never known anything different. She didn't *want* to know anything different.

"Ahh… alright then," Jacques said wanly. Kirika noticed him swallow. "I've been told you know that Kaede Ishinomori has had trouble with the law lately," he continued. "Her trial is very close, but the case will be thrown out for sure. Ishinomori and her cohorts have seen to that. However, it is a prime time for you to… well…." Jacques waved his right hand as though he could fan the words he was looking for from the air to his mouth. "…You know, do your thing," he finally settled on.

"We'll do it when *we* decide," Mireille retorted. "*Our* way. If Soldats won't give us assistance, then they can keep their interference to themselves as well."

Jacques said something else to placate Kirika's prickly partner, but his quavering voice had floated away from the girl's ears. Mireille's captivating tones had drifted too, become faint as if the blonde were speaking through a gag of cotton balls. Kirika's mind was enticed elsewhere, and had been piece by piece whilst her love and the Soldats operative's exchange hummed on from a lengthening distance. Her head was incessantly bid by an invisible finger on her chin to turn from her reflection in the shiny surface of the kotatsu to the yawning opening framing the room on her left. Her ears picked up a voice only she could hear, ringing clearer above the others, chasing them away; a beckoning that tugged her attention towards it.

The room next door took up the rest of the house's ground floor, a somewhat cramped space comprising of a kitchen and a small living area, the latter equipped with a television and computer. Seeing the computer ignited a fresh slew of memories to spark inside Kirika's head; visions of her sitting in front of its screen, her face illuminated by its promising glow while she perused the background of one Mireille Bouquet; assassin for hire; and hoping that this woman could bring enlightenment to her life. Kirika wondered if the information was still there in that computer even now, that road-sign to her and her partner's pilgrimage for the past, left undisturbed like everything else in the house she had seen so far. Mireille might like to read it if it was.

But it wasn't the computer or anything else particular to that room that exerted an attraction in Kirika. It was what lay above it, and the means to get there. The stairs to the second storey of the house were in that room, and it was from the top of them that the summons tumbled down. Maybe it was the ghosts speaking to her in their silent yet beguiling lilt, whispering in the air, gossamer voices carried on a breeze. The whispers reminded Kirika of the ones that haunted the caverns of her mind as opposed to the halls of a house, and she took a moment to listen inside them for the telltale echoes. But there was nothing. Empty darkness and quiet; not even rasping breaths in the murk. Different spectres were harassing Kirika this time.

The ghosts beseeched the hypnotised girl to come closer, implored her feet to climb those wooden stairs that connected to more memories buried in the past. Kirika would have to sooner or later. She would be staying in this house again, and the ghosts she would be taking up residence with would have to be greeted. Faced.

With lissom movements Kirika quietly slipped away from the kotatsu and Mireille's side, coaxed by the soft ethereal murmurs or compelled by her kindled courage, or maybe a mixture of both. If Mireille or Jacques noticed her go, she was oblivious to their looks. Kirika was focused on those stairs, at the behest of the invisible finger under her chin pulling her nearer. She didn't like leaving Mireille, but her petite feet stole over the tatami mats without thought, taking her out of the room and to the stairs, then up them, further into the past, deeper into the realm of old spirits.

Upstairs seemed somehow quieter, stiller, than the rest of the house below. The only light here was from the setting sun, and just like outside wherever the feeble rays hit sacrosanct surrealism bloomed. There was more dust here than downstairs; a thin coating on banisters and windowsills and more marking the time gone, shining in dusk's ruddy, dwindling, flame. Kirika left fingerprints and footprints in it as she went by, the signs of her return. No one had been up here for the period she had been off with Mireille in France. No one. This place at least really had been waiting for her.

The door to Kirika's imaginary parents' bedroom was open, and the girl glanced inside the room as she walked by. She had only been inside that room once, during her explorations after she had awakened in these then unfamiliar surroundings. She had left the room pretty much how she had initially discovered it. There was nothing in there except more foundations to the nevertheless flimsy lie that was Kirika Yuumura's normal background-her normal life. The bedroom had never had the feeling that it had ever been lived in; the bed ever slept in, the clothes in the wardrobes ever worn. It still had that feeling. A single cursory glance inside was enough.

Kirika's feet drove her onwards. She knew where they were going. It was where the ghosts gathered for their poignant commune. Her old bedroom was the last doorway near the end of the hall.

The door to Kirika's old bedroom was wide open too, like she used to keep it since creaking it open to explore the strange world outside the womb of blue-painted walls that had birthed her. It was from here the ghosts called, here that more of Kirika's memories waited to be remembered. Those memories taunted the girl's brain; scurrying around the fringes of her mind's eye like monsters hiding in the shadows. Images flickered with every scampering footfall, as though each struck an ember close to the paintings recounting her old life.

The salvo of memory flashes caused Kirika's feet to waver, her step beginning to degenerate to a shuffle as the spectres' beckoning lost its potence under the burst of mind sparks. Kirika's nerve quaked, and her fingers curled to make fists. She was scared of what the ghosts had in store for her; what stories of woe they'd tell, what old scabs they'd tear off. But while her stride slowed, it didn't stop. The ghosts *would* be faced. Kirika didn't run away from her past anymore.

Kirika's pulse was quick and her breath short when she braved standing in the doorway of her old bedroom, foreseeing a throng of hurtful hauntings to leap out at her from inside the room and from inside her mind. But nothing jumped out. Nothing materialised out of the thin air in front of her or from the room's shadows to spook Kirika, at least not in the manner she had predicted. A quiet sadness emanated from the bedroom; benign waves of despondency gently enveloping the girl like a fine vapour-the ethereal embraces of ghosts.

Kirika realised that the spectres weren't really cruel or malicious. They were just… sad. She had been summoned by their tortured moans, by their calls of pain-*her* pain. Kirika had spawned these spirits; they were *her* ghosts, her sad longing for the little peace and ordinariness her past life had contained birthing their shape and affliction. The melancholy she had been feeling before on the way to the house, outside it, and finally inside it didn't find its source in anything around her. Not from the house, not from this room. It came from the ghosts, and they came from Kirika. They haunted her mind, not the house.

Her ghosts' embrace washed away whatever fear Kirika had, leaving behind a room of reminders and a girl taken by reminiscence. That was what everything in this house was from her old bedroom to the computer downstairs-purely reminders of a past lived through. And the most potent reminders were all present in Kirika's former bedroom.

Like the rest of the house, not a single facet of the room varied from the recollection of it the darkhaired girl's memories narrated to her. Everything was in its place; everything on top of the long chest of drawers set against the right-hand wall, everything on the desk directly to her left; *everything*, as though Kirika had vacated the room mere minutes ago, or had never vacated it to begin with.

The bed, the dominating presence in the room and to Kirika, attracted the spellbound girl first. With steps shy thanks to reminiscence's charm, she entered the bedroom and approached bed, the covers tucked in and the pillows arranged neatly as if in preparation for her to spend the night in it. Her memories placed her lying on that bed, blinking her eyes open to the room around her, and on the nights subsequent to that one she had slept there again, but fleetingly compared to her seeming long torpor that had stolen more than a decade's worth of her life. Seeing it again made her recall the disorientation she had experienced upon awakening, the confusion that had subverted her mind with only one word as a guide through the blank muddle. But beyond that, Kirika wasn't sure what to feel. Her feelings were jumbled and hard to isolate, but most every one was coated with gloom-sadness, regret, and longing the routine triumvirate.

Kirika turned, and then moved to the desk that had once been the keeper of an artefact that had been the chain joining her, Mireille, and Soldats together and of a deadly weapon and its ammunition that had claimed many lives while wielded in her unenthusiastic but expert hands. She felt compelled to open the top drawer, just like she had done shortly after waking up in the very bed behind her. Kirika did just that, pulling it open smoothly and softly, mimicking motions performed a long time ago. It was empty of artefact, weapon, and ammunition, of course. Gone now, lost to the rigours of her and Mireille's pilgrimage with merely the cloth the items had once laid on as a memento. None would be missed.

"Perhaps we should sleep separately now that you have your old bedroom back. I noticed another bedroom down the hall that would suit me fine."

Kirika looked up from the empty drawer to the doorway enclosing a fair-haired and fair-skinned angel sculptured by the heavens and steered by fate to her. Mireille had her shoulder to the doorjamb, leaning her body nonchalantly against it with her arms folded and one bare leg bent behind the other, the ball of her foot tapping the floor absently. The teasing smile that Kirika had had cast in her direction many times brightened the blonde's already beautiful face, and her blue eyes had a twinkle to them that the younger girl had learned to be… wary… around. Despite that, Mireille was a vision in the faltering sunlight, an uplifting beacon for Kirika's solemn eyes and a balm for her troubled mind. Kirika hadn't been aware of her partner's arrival, the knowledge blockaded on account of her thoughts being swept up in the past or because of the woman's bare feet on the carpet muffling her approach. But Kirika was glad Mireille was here.

Kirika's face must have portrayed her anxiousness at Mireille's remarks, for the blonde's smile swelled to a big grin and the blue in her gaze sparkled with all the more gleeful intensity. "I didn't think so," she said in mirth. She tossed Kirika a playful wink; a gesture that elicited several full blinks from the girl herself, unused to such behaviour. Kirika was, however, used to Mireille's strange amusements-most of which were centred on her-but 'used to' didn't mean she understood it at all. It was hard for her to tell when her partner was joking or not, having a tendency to take the woman's words at their face value. To Kirika's dismay, that seemed to make Mireille jest more frequently, and also seemed to heighten her enjoyment of it.

Mireille's carefree mood turned out to not be as infectious as Kirika would have liked. As quick as her heart had elated at her love's appearance, her ghosts had moaned again of their-her-turmoil. Kirika's heart deflated and her visage came to bear the weary strain of a haunted soul once more. It was a face that fit her comfortably-she had worn it often in her short life.

"I missed you downstairs," Mireille said, the humour fading from her voice and expression. "Jacques is gone. I shooed him back to his masters. He had nothing of importance to say anyway."

"Mm…" Kirika mumbled monotonously as she closed the desk drawer as carefully as she had slid it open. Her head turned back towards the bedroom's doorway, but it wasn't Mireille that secured her notice this time. The sailor top of her school uniform still hung on the coat stand behind the door, as though waiting for her to take it and wear it to another day of classes at Tsubaki High School like nothing had happened; like she hadn't been off in France or had met Mireille, or had confronted Altena at the Manor and found out the mysteries behind the title 'Noir'. It was like a life on pause, yet Kirika had no hope of picking it up where she had left off.

"Feeling nostalgic?" Mireille asked softly.

Nostalgic. A word for what Kirika was feeling as a whole. Yet it didn't seem enough. It was more than just being nostalgic. The feelings were dug from deeper inside her, cut deeper, and the melancholy monumental. Nostalgic was too small a word to describe Kirika's feelings.

Wordlessly Kirika walked over to the uniform top, the trappings of a different girl that stood before it now. Mireille's eyes never wandered from her, the blonde's look a conduit for her sizable worry. How to make her understand? The ghosts flitting around in Kirika's head blurred and spun the words needed for her to tell of what she was enduring, but she snatched at them as best she could, wanting Mireille to know. And Mireille wanted to know too, Kirika recognised. Mireille wanted her to share the weight of her troubles, to help shoulder her burdens. This was one Kirika could share, one where her twin didn't darken the tale. Her darkness was the only affliction she would keep to herself indefinitely.

"It had been a lie," Kirika spoke quietly, staring at the uniform top as she fashioned her feelings into words from the clutter in her head. "But it had been a lie I was comfortable with. I wanted to believe it. I wanted… I wanted what everyone else had."

Kirika's hand took out her student card from a pocket of her parka, and then she looked down at it where it lay in her palm. The full-length mirror beside her caught her movement, and it captured her gaze too soon after. She remembered holding something different while looking into that mirror. A gun. *Her* gun. It had felt natural to her hands, more natural than this card. Kirika dropped her gaze to the student ID again; at the girl in it wearing a school uniform of the type her former classmates had. But underneath the clothes she had been different from them. She had been a demon disguised as a normal girl. Trying to be something she was not. "I wanted to be her. I wanted to be Kirika Yuumura."

Raising her heavy head, Kirika reached out and slipped the obsolete student card into the pocket of the sailor suit she had donned for her charade. The card disappeared easily inside the pocket, returned to the place she had originally discovered it. The life it was associated with had ended a long time ago.

Moments of silent reflection elapsed in seeming eternities, eternities where Kirika lived a different life than she did now. But the eternities succumbed when Kirika felt soft warmth against her back. She blinked down at the arm beneath her chin that was smoothing a course across her chest, tantalising her skin left exposed by her spaghetti strap top, and holding her close to the reassuring presence behind her. An enchanting scent delighted her nose; that wonderful bouquet that always caressed the corners of her mouth, enticing a blissful smile-the wonderful bouquet of a wonderful Bouquet.

Mireille's left arm around Kirika coaxed her to turn to face the mirror, and the image of the woman's compassionate eyes found hers in the glass. She saw that Mireille was stooped over a little to match her shorter height, her partner's chin near Kirika's left shoulder and her lips by her ear, with some of her blonde tresses blanketing the girl's upper arm in a silky cascade.

"We are who we are," Mireille said gently into Kirika's ear while absorbing her partner's sad reddish-brown gaze with her sympathetic blue in the mirror. "Wicked people took away many of your choices from you-from us. We can regret it all we like, but it won't change the past. All we can do is live on in the present."

The Mireille in the mirror smiled, and her right arm stretched over Kirika's shoulder for the old uniform top. Graceful fingers deftly retrieved the student card out of the uniform top's pocket, and then held it in front of the mirror for Kirika to see.

"And this is who you are in the present. There has only ever been one Kirika Yuumura to me. I met her in this city, where she lived, and I came to this house, her home, with her. This is you." The twinkle to Mireille's eyes came back, and she pursed her red lips into a little wry smirk. "Besides, life with me isn't so bad, is it?" she said a touch impishly.

Kirika's eyes stung with tears and her sight became hazy, but she was smiling. How could she forget? She had been so mired in the things she had lost in Japan that she had overlooked the things she had gained here. The companion she had gained. The friendship she had gained. The love she had gained. The single person whose coming into her existence made up for everything that Kirika's life had lacked. Mireille.

The plagues of loneliness and meaninglessness were gone forever. They were truly ghosts, dead and buried. They could haunt Kirika no more now that she had Mireille. She had nothing to fear from them, or from their memories. She still hoped for an ordinary life, the spectres that craved peace still calling, but Mireille would soothe her wishful heart and soul and quiet the moans until that life was realised. Kirika's former home wasn't a house of broken dreams. It was a house of an earnest dream fulfilled; of a fervent prayer answered. It was here that her partnership with Mireille had been moulded and set in unbreakable stone. That fact made this house not a locale to shrink from but to be adored and revered. Kirika understood now. The reverence; it had been because of that first and foremost. Because this was where she and Mireille and joined as one. It was a hallowed site more sacred than any of Soldats or Noir lore.

Mireille held her closer, and Kirika breathed in her perfume deeply. "Are you sure you don't want to sleep in separate rooms?" the blonde teased again.

"Mm!" Kirika hummed enthusiastically, nodding her head in a manner that left no doubt to her preference. She delicately cupped her hands around her student card that Mireille still dangled before her, taking it from her partner and then clenching it tight to her chest. She was Kirika Yuumura. And she was not alone.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

I hope I got the general layout of the bottom floor of Kirika's old house and her bedroom right.

Genkan = The foyer bit at the entrance of a house where you remove and leave your shoes in favour of slippers.

Kotatsu = A low table, with built in electric heater and blanket. I know the one in Kirika's house wasn't exactly like that as far as you can tell, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what that kind of table was called other than kotatsu or 'low table'. -_- Kotatsu is close enough!

Tatami mats = Mats primarily made of straw. Used for carpeting.


	19. The Illusion

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The nineteenth chapter. Much ado about… well, not nothing, but not very much either! Gomen!

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 19 - The Illusion

Mireille's can of coffee vented a hiss and then emitted a crack as she pulled its ring top open in one hand. Only the faintest wisp of steam sleepily emerged from the top to warm the canopy of her palm, and the heat her cradling fingers felt around the can was tepid at most. Mireille's coffee wasn't close to as piping hot as it had been when it had popped out of the vending machine standing outside the neighbourhood convenience store, but after she took a long draft she found it revitalising nonetheless, washing away a little more of her air travel fatigue in a rush of lukewarm caffeine.

With the aftertaste of coffee in her mouth, Mireille sat the can down on the kotatsu she herself was seated cross-legged at, though it took her a moment to find space for it. The small table in the centre of the Yuumura 'living room' was laden with clutter, the mess single-handedly ruining the serene atmosphere of the ordinarily immaculate Japanese interior. The papers Jacques had transferred to the blonde's keeping had lost their orderly stacking and most were scattered freely across the kotatsu, the consequence of Mireille's transitory flick through their contents. The remainder drew a white mishmash semi-circle on the tatami mats around where Mireille sat, penning her in against the kotatsu and indicating the spot where she had spent her time perusing the documents earlier in the evening. Her gun lay nearby on the floor outside of the paper crescent, easily in reach of her right hand, and her position giving her an unhindered line of sight to the front door, the windows showing the back garden, and the kitchen-all the possible entries into the room. She doubted she would ever feel safe in this so-called safehouse.

Some space had been sloppily cleared in the jumbled paper coating in front of Mireille and on the other side of the table opposite her; just enough for two plastic bowls of instant ramen to bolster the disarray-dinner for her and Kirika's first night in their new, and yet familiar, temporary abode. Mireille seldom subjected herself to this kind of junky cuisine without due cause. However, an empty refrigerator and cupboards with every shelf bare was plenty. Breffort could have had the courtesy to stock the house with food, considering what Mireille and Kirika agreed to undertake on Soldats' behalf. It was just another reason for the Corsican assassin to seethe over him and his supercilious mien, another log for the fire smouldering inside her, additional debt to be settled. That being said, Mireille didn't think she would have trusted any provisions Breffort might have left for her and her partner anyway. She would have never been sure what was in them. Poison, mind-altering drugs… suspicion fed and darkened her imagination, and took the edge off her hunger and thirst.

The edge, but not all of her hunger and thirst. Thus, an impromptu and quick trip to a store to organise a makeshift dinner was inevitable, and two bowls of instant ramen and two drink cans were the resulting fare. It was enough for tonight, and breakfast for the next morning had been taken care of too, although it was just as nutritionally defunct-a couple of sweet buns, one stuffed with strawberry jam and the other with curry that were to be heated in the microwave.

Mireille ran a finger around and around the circular rim of her coffee can while she absently mulled over which bun Kirika would prefer. Mireille had been too exhausted to dedicate much thought to what to buy at the store for dinner and breakfast, or to even pose to Kirika what she might specifically like to eat. Instead, the then grouchy and impatient woman had simply snatched things off shelves on the slightest impulse in an effort to return to the Yuumura household as soon as possible for rest and relaxation. Tomorrow's grocery shopping outing would be different; more engaging and fun for Kirika; Mireille promised. It was worryingly apparent to Mireille that Kirika was very sensitive to their personally historic surroundings and unsavoury situation. Her talk with Kirika in the girl's old bedroom at dusk looked to have had great success at consoling her, yet Mireille still held concerns. Anything that the blonde could do that she believed would placate her partner's uneasy mind and divert it from their troubles, no matter how trivial seeming, she would try to do. After all, it was those small, seemingly trivial things in life that appeared to engross Kirika.

Mireille unfolded her bare legs, stretching them straight out underneath the kotatsu. Her thigh and calf muscles ached luxuriously, and she hummed in contentment through languorously smiling lips before flexing her toes up and down a few times, feeling the muscles there pull taut with the same pleasurable throb.

Night had fallen in Kawasaki and Mireille was in her sleepwear-her oversized shirt and nothing else, the blonde desiring to feel as uninhibited and relaxed as she could; as close as to what she had felt like while lounging in the bathtub upstairs. The temperature of her coffee had been sacrificed and dinner postponed for a much-needed hot and sumptuous soak, Mireille having trudged upstairs to the bathroom as soon as she and Kirika had arrived back at the house following their shopping compulsion. It wasn't the coveted shower Mireille had fantasised about soon after touching down drained and dishevelled in the country, but the Yuumura household's bathroom facilities had been skewed towards the Japanese preference for baths, and the worn-out woman hadn't been picky.

She had been guarded, however. This house was Soldats property, and could harbour any number of listening devices and spy cameras wired directly to the secret society's operatives, either planted shortly before Mireille and Kirika's coming or many months ago when the latter girl had lived in isolation here. Stripping down in the bathroom under the apprehension that hidden eyes were leering at her had been an ill thought for Mireille. She had not been too tired and dirty to not perform a sweep of the bathroom for shady surveillance equipment and allay her mistrust before disrobing and reclining in the tub. The rest of the house still had to be inspected, but that could wait until tomorrow. Mireille reminded herself to tell Kirika to undress in the verified privacy of the bathroom pending that inspection. If there was a thought more repellent than Soldats agents peeping at her, it was Soldats agents peeping at Kirika.

A shrill and persistent whistle from the kitchen proclaimed that dinner was more or less ready with the water for the bowls of ramen coming to boil. The whistle became hushed, and a moment later the girl responsible for the stifling drifted out of the kitchen and into the room, a kettle in her hand.

Mireille smiled affectionately at Kirika as she walked closer, and that tenderness continued in her eyes as she watched her partner kneel at the kotatsu and peel back the lids of the instant ramen bowls halfway, before carefully pouring in the hot water from the kettle. Steam rose, appetising aromas riding it to reach Mireille's nose that in turn generated rumbles in her stomach. However, Mireille's roused hunger was suppressed in favour of waiting for Kirika to be ready to join her. The girl had considerately and patiently delayed eating to allow the blonde to finish her bathing in spite of Mireille's bid for her to start in her absence. Mireille hadn't had much faith that her invitation would be accepted. Kirika had lived alone in this house for a long time; a time only ended when Mireille had come to see her and agreed to take the Japanese schoolgirl into her own life. Kirika had never eaten alone again. Mireille didn't think she would begin to now, and definitely not here.

And so Mireille waited those few minutes with a literal smile. It was a small return for the kindness given to her, and yet a significant gesture for Kirika. Passing the short span of time admiring the cute girl as she carried out the domestic chore wasn't something to protest anyway.

Mireille's gaze followed Kirika's every movement, no matter how subtle, it feasting on a delectable treat while her stomach abstained. The woman swallowed as she grew to realise the depth of her interest, her old yearnings rekindled in the moment of affection and tempered by the confrontation of equally old reservations. The knowledge that she was naked but for a nightshirt swelled to consume her thoughts; the slightest brush of the material on her bare and suddenly sensitised skin amplified to incredible acuity. Naked but for a nightshirt and with Kirika right there in front of her, close enough to touch. Close enough to caress….

Mireille crossed her legs under the kotatsu, her thighs clinched together tightly. She was no slave to her emotions, and certainly not to her physical cravings… once, at any rate, before she had gained a partner. A partner she couldn't refrain from adoring.

Kirika was not like any other woman Mireille had been attracted to. Mireille had feelings for this particular young woman-romantic feelings. Loving feelings. Love was the special spicing that made it different somehow. It made the allure… *stronger*; more beguiling. Harder to deter… because she really didn't want to. Emotions burned and inspired just as ardent thoughts; burned with passion distinctive from the fire of vengeance Mireille was accustomed to. This fire raged with formidable intensity to make it a match for the other if not the victor, but with a softer flame; candlelight to an inferno. Nevertheless, like the other it thirsted to be quenched, heating the blood and quickening the heart.

But Kirika was still young. Young, and ignorant to Mireille's secret lusts and longings which inflamed her body and heart. She was ignorant to them in general, right down to their very workings and meanings. She was innocent to them, and innocently trusting of Mireille. It still felt wrong to Mireille to have such wants; her potent desire laden with guilt that tainted it; and yet like a siren song she was powerless to stop herself revisiting them time and again. They were undeniable. Inescapable.

Summoning the iron will that had served her dependably throughout her career as a contract killer, Mireille peeled her eyes off of Kirika's petite figure and stared at her bowl of steaming ramen instead. It was just a few inches difference, but shifting her gaze that much felt like an enormous achievement; the mass of a mountain hefted. It was going to be a gruelling night in bed for Mireille, her only hope that her fatigue would sedate her. She was starting to regret that bath; a cold shower despite the awkward facilities might have been the better choice.

Kirika stood up and returned to the kitchen to put away the kettle, and Mireille exhaled heavily into the wafting vapour from her ramen, propelling it into swirls, once the girl had left her sight. Mireille stared at her food several moments longer to try to get a grip on herself, that she had need to do such a thing somewhat staggering, and then drew her legs out from under the table to lie tucked beside her before ripping her ramen bowl's lid the rest of the way free in one curt motion.

Optimistic that eating would distract her, Mireille briskly snapped her wooden chopsticks apart and was lifting a belt of noodles out of her bowl with them just as Kirika re-entered the room. Kirika brought her can of juice with her this time and knelt at the opposite side of the kotatsu to commence her own dinner. She still wore the clothes she had donned a seeming age ago in Paris, having no chance yet to wash and change on account of Mireille doing both before her, the compliant girl remaining grubby and tousled for the sake of her partner.

They ate in comfortable quiet for some minutes, with Mireille stealing looks across the table while she fed noodles into her mouth. The blonde watched Kirika suck up her own mouthful of noodles, and discovered that by the time the end of the last noodle disappeared wriggling between her partner's pursed lips, her chopsticks had frozen in midair; fingers forgetting they were there; and she was smiling again. Kirika had ways of doing things that were endearingly amusing; novel little mannerisms for everything she did down to the smallest and simplest action. They were always a hook for Mireille's notice, out of intrigue or fondness, or regularly both. But peculiar or funny, the constant was they were just plain charming… cute…. Like the girl they belonged to.

Kirika raised her eyes from her ramen and caught on to Mireille's attention and smile over the table. She batted her eyes at the woman and cocked her head a little to the side, ever curious and observant, and seemingly especially when it related to Mireille.

"Good?" Mireille inquired on a whim, her amusement present in her voice.

"Mm," Kirika nodded, chewing her latest mouthful of ramen slowly as though appraising the taste right then.

Mireille's smile and gaze stayed on Kirika for a few instants longer, and then suddenly remembering the chopsticks in her hand, she idly dug at the noodles in her bowl. "Four days," she spoke into her bowl in a shadow of her prior exuberant ease, a forced mimicking of it. She stared at her chopsticks tilling the ramen, but her focus was on Kirika.

Hearing nothing but the calm of night, Mireille tilted her gaze upwards to peek at Kirika. The girl's darkhaired head was bowed, her attention on her food and yet not, like Mireille, and she looked as if it abruptly didn't taste as nice.

Four days. It was the time ticking away too slowly for Mireille's liking until Kaede Ishinomori's court date in Yokohama. Despite Mireille's belligerent rejoinder to Jacques' suggestion of it, it was a sound moment to terminate the leader of Soldats' splinter group and any notable cohorts she had with her on the occasion-Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu being the most sought after by the vengeful Corsican assassin. Kaede would have to leave whatever secure location she had probably holed herself up in; be it her company's headquarters or somewhere less recognised; leave it and its defences and familiarity, and risk showing her face in public for a target to be painted on it. Of course Mireille expected her to travel by armoured motorcade and bring along bodyguards to protect her at the minimum, but the confrontation would at least ensue on neutral ground instead of in Ishinomori territory. Even so, Kaede being out in the open meant her escort would be prone to a heightened state of vigilance. Every strategy had its pros to abet and its cons to overcome; it was a professional's job to exploit both to facilitate her assignment.

"Four days and then we're home again," Mireille went on, or rather amended shrewdly for brooding Kirika's benefit, regretting that she had sabotaged the already fragile mood. Striking at Kaede when she was in court was also the fleetest means of ending their stay in Japan. It was four days before Mireille and Kirika's involvement with Soldats was finished and the pair was on a one-way trip back to Paris. Quick and clean their indentured service would be over, with just the memory of it to be repressed, another facet of their past unwanted and unacknowledged.

Mireille silently and on a caprice slipped her right leg under the kotatsu, her foot inching across the tatami mats toward where Kirika knelt, seeking the texture of her soft skin. The woman's big toe hit upon its desire and then stroked lightly over one of Kirika's knees, the merest touch… but it was a bounty.

Kirika looked up at once and Mireille withdrew her foot a tad bashfully, suddenly self-conscious to have done such a thing. She was embarrassed to be embarrassed; that it was in front of and because of her partner making it worse somehow. The usually cool blonde leapt upon the emotion like it was a primed hand grenade, smothering it with discipline.

Triumphant in her quashing, Mireille raised her head to meet Kirika's eye and made herself smile fuller. Her lips strained against the compelling, but she was adamant. Her smile was too, it a little forced and a little demanding, wanting its muse to return it in kind.

Kirika did, to the relief of Mireille's heart, and to her slight guilt as a result of her peacemaking coercing. The girl's smile was smaller and more reserved, but it was honest, and strong in its shy way, fortunately regardless of the Corsican's pressuring.

Kirika backed up her smile with a nod of recognition. She was ready, if perhaps not wholeheartedly willing. Mireille knew she could count on Kirika. She could count on the girl with her life. Like always. Like a partner should.

Four days.

* * *

The wardrobe's doors opened on squeaky and time-stiffened hinges as Mireille pulled on the two knobs, and the threads of cobwebs entwined with dust were stretched firm between where the backmost edge of the doors and the wardrobe's frame met. There were plenty clothes inside; men's clothes by the look of them; dangling from hangers and packed together, but Mireille knew they had never seen the light of day before now, let alone been worn. They looked ordinary but they were Soldats' attire, belonging to a fictional man-a fictional father.

Mireille leafed through the clothes a little, not expecting to find anything other than dust and found just that, and then stuck her head inside the wardrobe to examine the walls and corners cloistered by the garments. A stale stench suffocated her and was all she uncovered behind them. She even ran a palm along the walls just to be thorough, searching for any suspicious bumps or wires that could indicate a microphone or lead to one while braving the possibility of encountering bugs of the crawlier sort.

Mireille breathed a sigh as she pulled her head out of the wardrobe, her hunt for covert surveillance devices fruitless so far. She wasn't sure if she was thankful or frustrated to unearth nothing. It was good if the house really was clean, but with no proof of that beyond nothing, how could she ever truly be comfortable? Those of Soldats were sly, and Mireille still maintained that Breffort was having her and Kirika watched even now, this distant from Paris. He did say his agents were in Japan, skirmishing with Ishinomori's rebels. Jacques could attest to that and was testament himself. The woman speculated if she actually *wanted* some evidence to be discovered to justify her paranoia. Would she then feel comfortable? The irony was not lost on Mireille. Essentially, she would never be content. She kept looking nonetheless.

Mireille had only searched the bathroom-that search done last night and repeated more meticulously this morning-and had moved on to investigating what was mocked up to be Kirika's parents' bedroom. The double bed, the chest of drawers, two pictures, a stand lamp, and this wardrobe had been scrutinised in the room up to now, with the second wardrobe next for the treatment. Searching every inch of the house would probably take half the day, but at the minute time was an enemy she could freely kill.

Mireille closed the wardrobe and then stretched for the squat cupboard with matching doors sitting just above it. Behind the sloping wooden slats was a shelf with, unsurprisingly, more clothes, folded and arranged in piles. It wasn't until Mireille pushed aside a stack that the innocuous charade was revealed for what it was. A number of white boxes made their own piles behind the clothes, and Mireille had seen enough of their type in her life to recognise what they contained.

The assassin stood on tiptoes to grasp a box, and then took it down from the shelf. It was heavier than the small package would lead you to believe, strengthening what Mireille already alleged. Her thumb flipped the box's lid open, exposing rows of bullets to the sunlight, their casings glinting gold. The calibre was intimately recognisable: 9mm Parabellum, the rounds the blonde had used exclusively with her Walther P99 in her life taking lives. Jacques had mentioned something about supplies before she had tossed him out, Mireille recalled. She found it no shock that Soldats had stocked the correct ammunition for her weapon of choice. 9mm rounds for Kirika's Beretta M1934 had to be in one of those other boxes too but if not those, then somewhere else in the house.

Mireille frowned and squeezed the box of bullets in her hand as she counted the other boxes on the shelf. A sufficient amount for a small platoon with automatic weapons, or enough to keep Mireille and Kirika supplied for five or six months if they accepted a contract every week and got into a serious shootout every time. Longer still, if each assignment went smoothly. Perhaps Soldats was being generous, but Mireille read something more sinister into it. Soldats wanted 'their' Noir here and fighting for them indefinitely.

Mireille shoved the open ammunition box back on the shelf, making no effort to hide it, and shut the cupboard's doors. Soldats' presumptions would be shot full of holes using the very the bullets they contributed come four days' time.

The wardrobe and cupboard faced the foot of the bed, while the second wardrobe was on the wall to Mireille's right, facing the bedroom's door. She turned to go toward the latter, however her eyes and mind couldn't desist being attracted to and distracted by the bed in the corner of her vision. Mireille and Kirika had slept the night away in that bed. It had been as dusty and stale as most everything else in the house and had needed some airing out, but the young women's bodies had ultimately given it warmth and verve; the first bodies ever to. Their suitcases were on the floor by the bottom of the bed too, open and with their clothes exposed, stripping a little more from the unlived-in atmosphere that the Yuumura household languished in. Making it bit by bit *truly* the Yuumura household, the Bouquet and Yuumura household, if only for four days.

It was a double bed, larger than the bed in Mireille's apartment in Paris, but the extra space was wasted with a pillow companion like Kirika. Kirika had snuggled up next to her like clockwork, and while the blonde needless to say wasn't really against it or loathe to it, it had made the night drag on longer, due to her… preoccupation… with certain tingling and itching sensations… and not to mention her rather wildly disobedient and fanciful thoughts. Squirming just a tad in Kirika's arms was nothing new, but rarely had it been as torturous as last night. Exhaustion had mercifully snuffed out Mireille's consciousness eventually, however not before she had started to vehemently curse not wearing any underwear whatsoever.

A sheepish twist to Mireille's mouth surfaced as she looked at the bed. At least the additional bedspace had let her stretch her legs a little, if not the rest of her body… although, that freedom had rather rendered her fixation on the physical more profound. Mireille hoped she'd have better control of herself in the following nights, or else these four days were going to feel much longer than they already would and for much different reasons… though reasons quite more pleasant in their way.

Mireille took a breath, and then picked up her task where she had left off, walking to the room's other wardrobe and corresponding cupboard. If she walked on somewhat unstable legs, she would never admit it.

Mireille opened the wardrobe with a bored expression on her face as the reality of her monotonous but necessary chore took hold once more. She expected woman's wear within this time, and she was not wrong. The blonde pressed her lips together thoughtfully at what clothing was presented, passing interest blossoming in tedium's fertility. Her bare toes scrunched the carpeting in absent incessant fists while she brushed through the garments with a flicking hand, rummaging for the prime outfits; if any; that might also be in her size. It felt a little strange, as though Mireille was scavenging in Kirika's mother's wardrobe after the woman had passed on. The Corsican supposed that wasn't too warped from the truth, but she didn't allow herself to think like that for long. These clothes had no tags but they were new-unworn. There *was* no mother, and there never had been. Mireille might as well have been browsing through a rack in a boutique.

A somewhat dowdy boutique, Mireille grimaced. There was nothing that stood out amongst the clothes to make a blip on the blonde's fashion radar; Soldats had a poor sense of style. Too much black for starters.

Mireille's perceptions honed over her years of training and practice as a professional assassin piqued-perpetual awareness, sharp hearing, and intuition banding together to notify her of the arrival of company. She beamed as she ceased her poking around in the wardrobe and lifted her chin knowingly, not needing any of her senses to tell exactly whose soulful reddish-brown eyes were on her back.

Mireille smoothly turned to welcome Kirika with her smile. She had left Kirika downstairs eating the last bites of her curry bun and with the trifling washing up to attend to after breakfast, which the girl had evidently seen to quickly. Dishes and cutlery were at least in the kitchen drawers and cupboards, but Mireille had not much doubt that they were leftovers from her partner's stay in the house rather than Soldats charity.

Kirika spied on Mireille meekly from the hallway outside the bedroom, half her body peeping past the green stained glass panes of the tastefully attractive French doors' side panels. The glass had a design imprinted on it that was relatively simple and yet ornate at the same time, a darker shade of green accenting it. Arches and curves about the doors' handles and more near knee and head height, and a straight strip edging the bottom of the doors and their side panels together with them, where the glass was one solid pane instead of a series. There was nothing else quite like them in the rest of the house. Soldats appeared to have some taste after all, in selected aspects.

Mireille shifted an apprehensive look briefly back to the wardrobe behind her, suddenly anxious how Kirika might feel to see her raking through her 'family's' belongings, albeit pseudo belongings as they were known to be. She internally fumbled, unsure whether to explain herself or leave it unsaid to prevent bringing further attention to it. The house and the memories it had kept warm for Kirika were a delicate issue for the emotionally delicate girl, and Mireille didn't want her tactlessness to salt the wound her partner bore anymore than the return to Kawasaki and the household already had.

But while Mireille was consumed with groping for insight, Kirika calmly deserted the doorway and wandered into the bedroom, appearing blasé to the blonde's snooping. Mireille blinked once, surprise on her face, before her smile reaffirmed itself; grateful that Kirika was unmoved and that she could stop her scrambling and let go of the guilt that had started to bud inside her. Kirika was a strong girl. Sometimes Mireille forgot just how strong she was to have survived and become the person she was now after everything she had been through.

Kirika's roaming took her to the chest of drawers right of the bedroom's entrance where some books were stacked upright next to each other, a cordless phone together with its charger sat, and where Mireille's ever close at hand pistol rested. She looked down at the chest of drawers and then wiped her right index finger over its top, before raising the finger to eyelevel to peer at and ponder.

Mireille walked past the bed and approached the chest of drawers herself to look over Kirika's shoulder. "This house could do with a clean," she remarked, placing a hand on her hip.

"Mm…" Kirika hummed in meditative accord as she rubbed the grey smudge on her finger under her thumb.

Mireille stared at Kirika's rubbing thumb and finger silently for a couple of seconds, momentarily captivated by it, before she remembered her whereabouts and reclaimed her train of thought. Her hand traded her hip for Kirika's slender shoulder. "A *thorough* clean," Mireille underscored.

Kirika turned to Mireille, the Corsican's hand smoothing over her shoulder with the girl's movement but not leaving it. Intrigue encouraged an adorably inquisitive expression on Kirika's pretty face that the blonde knew well, and Mireille arched a meaningful eyebrow in counter, testing whether she understood the type of cleaning that was required above any other.

Kirika dipped her head slowly, gazing up into Mireille's blue eyes all the while. She did understand. Mireille had remembered to alert Kirika last night to her reservations that Soldats might have wired the house, so as a consequence her partner was aware of the possible lack of security. With the girl's personal privacy potentially on the line, there had been no way giving such a warning would have slipped Mireille's mind.

"You can see to downstairs while I take the upstairs," Mireille suggested with a pleased smile. Upstairs was where the past was the most potent for Kirika, where Soldats had envisioned her parents' to sleep, and where her own former bedroom was; the bedroom that she had awakened from her Altena-induced coma in. Kirika was strong and she had confronted those places and the pains they had wrought, but that was no cause to push her when it could be spared. Leaving her alone in either of those rooms to dwell on her memories wasn't a good idea. Granted, they slept in Kirika's fallacious parents' bedroom-in their very bed-and stood in it even now, but at least Mireille was beside her at this time and those others to keep her centred in the present. A living, breathing reminder of how her life had changed.

"Mm-mmm," Kirika hummed, her singsong of disagreement. She smiled a bit, still looking Mireille in the eye. "I can clean upstairs."

Mireille furrowed her brow part in worry and part in disbelief, unsure how to take Kirika's offer or her courage. "Are you sure?" she quizzed skeptically. "I can-"

"Mm!" Kirika rejected again before Mireille could even finish, shaking her head and her mop of hair with it in her enthusiasm. "It's okay."

Mireille frowned doubtfully at Kirika some more, but eventually sighed and unsteadily smiled her somewhat reluctant approval, though her marvel at the diminutive yet resilient girl before her persisted. "Alright."

Perhaps Mireille shouldn't fret so much over Kirika. Kirika was a troubled and sensitive soul, but perchance Mireille could relax her guidance and care just a little. But wasn't it natural to fuss over a loved one?

"Alright." Mireille's mouth crept higher into a glowing smile that reflected in her shining eyes. There was nothing wrong with being protective of the one you love.

* * *

Cradling the glass dome in her hand, Mireille gingerly snapped it back in its place over-or more accurately, under-the kitchen ceiling's lighting fixture's internal workings, careful not to drop it or lose her balance perched atop a dining chair. Like in every other obscure nook and cranny she had explored in the house before, she had come across no trace of Soldats scrutiny, just a yield of more dirt and dust. Her Soldats mendacity mania goaded her to carry on with her ferreting in spite of her failure after failure, but even that drive was starting to wear out. That didn't imply that Mireille was feeling any further satisfaction with her and Kirika's degree of privacy, however she was becoming increasingly if grudgingly resigned to stewing in whatever degree that might be.

The chair wobbled precariously as Mireille carefully squatted down from the ceiling, its legs drumming a convulsive cadence on the tiled floor and triggering her heart to jump and almost mimic the thumping. She hastily grabbed onto the backrest and tentatively lowered one leg to the floor, and was reassured when her questing bare foot encountered solid ground and instilled instant stability. Mireille's other leg followed, and she dismounted the chair before pushing it back to the table she had borrowed it from.

Mireille's hands went to her hips and slid around to rest at the small of her back whilst she looked up at the light. It was at irksome times like these when the assassin lamented not owning a scanner that detected radio signals or whatever was broadcasted to reduce the tedium and ease the search for hidden transmitters. But it wasn't as though her standard assignments normally required such a precaution. Moreover, Mireille was a purist. From a young age she had been taught the traditions of the trade in chorus with the deadly trade itself under her Uncle Claude, who had been an old-style professional killer to his core… and to his very end. He had drilled into her that all an assassin needed to do her job was her chosen weapon-and he had spoken the truth. Everything else was a perquisite-comforts-and to depend on them stunted the staple skills that you *should* be depending on. Amateurs relied on the flair of technological tools and tricks; on their nightvision goggles, on thermal, on long-range rifles and security camera hacks. Such equipment was convenient, yes; they slicked the assignment with their hi-tech helping. But to be at their mercy was something a real professional would never permit themselves to be. Professionals like Mireille. One's own abilities, one's own senses, were what an assassin should fundamentally count on and hone to precision. You'd never be without your own talents and training; they wouldn't malfunction or be misplaced as easily as machinery. They'd never be your crutch.

The corner of Mireille's mouth slowly pulled into a lopsided smile. A professional contract killer could also believe in their partner, if they were blessed to have one watching their back. That principle rubbed against what creed the Corsican had been tutored in and had adhered to religiously for many years, but despite her past prejudices she knew it to be true. Trust in another, when rightly and wholeheartedly placed, was worth more than any gadgets and gear one could muster. Just give her Kirika by her side and Mireille could tackle any undertaking. Noir was a heritage for two, and had been for centuries. There was a reason why.

Mireille's fingers tapped upon the base of her spine as she skimmed over the kitchen and living room next door. Her moments in this house had been but a blink of an eye compared to Kirika's spell here, but the house did have common import in both their lives. Mireille had come here after her earliest meeting with Kirika, and it was here, just in the neighbouring room, that she had acceded to work together with the girl. Being back evoked echoes of the feelings and thoughts of that time; suspicion, anger, intrigue, and hesitant hope; but that was as far as nostalgia took the blonde. The places that stood out in her past, that haunted her-*had* haunted her-were almost on the other side of the world, in the Mediterranean; her former home in Corsica not unlike what this Japanese locale meant to Kirika. The past plagued Kirika in Kawasaki, but for Mireille it merely tickled her with the remembrance of what magnificent and heavenly changes to her life the bitter beginnings here had ultimately fostered.

The gnawing ache in Mireille's stomach compelled her to divert her scrutiny to the clock on the kitchen wall, where its face told the story of the morning she had frittered away in a vain search of the house's ground floor for secreted spying devices. She exhaled long and laboured, and then rubbed her forehead. If Kirika hadn't found anything-and Mireille assumed she had not since she had yet to hear a peep from her partner or see her since leaving her upstairs-then the blonde's hopes of digging up vilifying evidence of Soldats intrusion were all but dashed. Her distrust of the organisation hounded her to pursue her crusade no matter what, but it was weak beneath her rational mind's counsel. If there were anything to find, Mireille or Kirika would have found it by now. At least, that is what she reasoned logically. Suspicion and bias shouted in resistance, but short of tearing the house's insides literally apart, for now Mireille deemed the wisest course was to yield.

However, they were being watched somehow and from somewhere. The Corsican assassin's instincts and good judgment were not so skewed by her Soldats prejudice. Perhaps the watchers weren't in this house, but they were in the vicinity, just like Mireille had felt them to be in Paris when Breffort had first 'enlisted' Kirika and herself. Mireille could only hope that the hostilities between Soldats and Ishinomori hampered their surveillance and shadowing.

Mireille snatched her pistol off the kitchen table, its barrel scratching along the plastic, and spun around to head for the stairs, the weapon shoved inside the waistband of her pants at the small of her back by the time she was climbing the first few steps. She still didn't assume safety in this Soldats-run safehouse. Then again, there was a short list of places outside her Parisian apartment where she let her guard slacken at all. And *no* place where she travelled unarmed.

Halfway up the stairs Mireille spotted Kirika on the landing. To be exact, she spotted her partner's legs through the wooden railings before any other part of her; pale litheness revealed below the tan shorts she wore from mid-thigh to Kirika's feet. A little higher a baggy pink knit jumper sagged off her shoulders, the stretched neck showing its wearer's delicate collarbones. Its sleeves almost swallowed her small hands; hands that wiped a ratty cloth along the dark and dusty timber of a banister.

The tension strung across Mireille's brow loosened as soon as she beheld the simple delight of Kirika being her endearing self, the serious matters on her mind progressively less pressing; easing their demands for attention as thoughts of the girl before her and only that girl drifted through her head, blotting everything else out. There was a time-long ago now it seemed, though not even a year past in reality-that Mireille would have abhorred company of any sort on an assignment. She had lived alone, and had operated alone. And had… perhaps not liked it, but had been content with her self-sufficiency. It was the way it had been since leaving the shelter of Uncle Claude's wing. She had only taken social succour when it happened upon her; the casual offshoot discourse with her acquaintances-who were mostly inclined on the side of business contacts, really-after the important issues had been addressed, and whatever fortuitous female companionship that met her taste which also served for that other kind of succour at the rare occasions she desired it slaked.

Yet now the notion of executing a contract without Kirika, a partner, was the abhorrent. Mireille was astounded she had ever been content working in solitary, and living in that fashion too for that matter. Having someone with you when away from home, be that a far distance or short, made it seem less like a job and more like a vacation of sorts. It removed the boredom, sped up time, and dulled the gravity of the job. It made it more than mere tolerable. It made it… pleasant.

Mireille stepped onto the landing and wrapped her right hand loosely behind the crown of the banister's post beside her, her hand tracing the smooth contours as she casually swivelled herself around to meet Kirika on the other side of the railing. The blonde cocked a bemused eyebrow at the worn and mucky cloth in Kirika's polishing hand as she strolled up to her. Had Kirika misinterpreted her and taken her instruction to clean a little *too* diligently? Mireille's eyebrow rose to challenge her hairline. Where had she gotten that cloth anyway?

Before these ambiguities could coalesce too thickly, the woman shook her blonde head slightly to disperse them, reconciled in dismissal. She was habituated to Kirika quirkiness and recognised that it was typically best not to analyse the unique behaviour too much or for too long, but rather just indulge it without question, if she could refrain her curiosity. And, of course, enjoy its amusements and charm wherever possible. Mireille had been sincere in any case; the house had honestly needed a scrub and tidy-more examples of Soldats hospitality. The dusting Kirika had apparently been busy meting out couldn't hurt. The Corsican trusted nonetheless that Kirika had been keeping a look out for suspicious electronics throughout her stint as a maid. Such intuition had been bred into the young assassin; it was her natural instinct.

Despite that instinct, menial everyday chores like the household one she performed now seemed to be an affection of hers. It was so different from her real forte, and in more respects than merely the obvious violent disparities. This was work Kirika pursued willingly. The way her hands stroked the cloth across the wooden beam… so gently, almost with frailty flagging her fingers, and yet with that shadow underneath the edge of perception; that deadly grace, that sleeping strength, that killer's instinct. Mireille saw it with her eyes accustomed to death's shade, but for those not similarly gifted Kirika was a girl cleaning a banister. Nothing more.

There was a familiar pit of sadness in Mireille as she let her gaze linger on Kirika's rubbing hands, and anger welling inside too, but there was also grim respect and appreciation for the skill in that petite and unassuming body. Kirika was an outstanding assassin. Innocent, yes, unsuited for the calling, yes; but that was the pure reality of it. Mireille detested that what should have been an ordinary, unburdened girl in front of her had been tainted into the wounded soul she was now, but she admired Kirika's ability and was grateful that she had it at her disposal and assisting her. The newly-awakened sentimental woman and the assassin hardened through years of cold murder fought inside Mireille, the first wishing an end to Kirika's anguish, and the other always wanting Kirika armed and dangerous as her business partner. Constantly they wrestled in silent competition, neither controlling absolute, consequently riddling the blonde with insecurities, longings, and guilt she did what she could to bottle up. As things were now there could be no conclusion to that conflict, not when Kirika's aptitude was needed. There was the option of Mireille working alone until the issues with Soldats were resolved, but she wasn't eager to have her Japanese counterpart's gun quiet and holstered instead of adding to her own firepower. Nor did she think Kirika would ever take to the altruistic idea.

Mireille sighed softly and her expression collapsed into tiredness. You would have thought it an easy dispute to decide. Kirika's suffering or Kirika's peace. But it wasn't. Mireille couldn't decide one way or the other. What did that mean? She loved Kirika, and yet… this? Her career; what had been the focus of her life up until the point she had obtained a partner; or the emerging new focus of her life; that partner, Kirika. It wasn't a choice to be made in present circumstances, but it did not wander long from its nest in the back of Mireille's thoughts.

Mireille fitted her smile on her face again, though it didn't have to be put on for more than a couple of instants before it settled her mouth into a natural warm curve. Kirika's sweetness should be savoured where and when it could on the otherwise harsh and thorn-ridden black path, and Mireille's heart seldom allowed those prime opportunities to slip by unappreciated of late. Moreover, Mireille had given up most if not all pretence of opposition. The moments she caught herself daydreaming-mayhap even swooning over, but her pride in her self-restraint refused her to consider it was that chronic *just* yet-about her diminutive partner were gradually turning less startling, and the spans she spoiled herself smitten in them lengthier.

"Did you find anything?" Mireille asked, not so far gone that she couldn't find her tongue.

Mireille's voice stopped the motions of the cloth on the banister, and Kirika turned her doe eyes at Mireille. "Mm-mmm," she mumbled with a shake of her head.

The Corsican had anticipated the result, but being confronted with it didn't make it sit any more comfortably inside her. Soldats limitless eyes' were on them both… if not inside the house, then outside.

Mireille tilted her head a little to the side and smirked at Kirika, crossing her arms beneath her chest. "Did you develop an appetite doing all that cleaning? Or should I find you a vacuum and leave you to it?" The thought of including a lacy French maid uniform with the vacuum cleaner skipped blithely through the blonde's imagination; Kirika doing the skipping while draped enticingly in the thought; but Mireille let it slip away into the ether of her mind. She was in control. She had restraint. Where would she attain an outfit like that here and right this minute anyhow?

If her excessive tidying embarrassed Kirika or if she picked up on her partner's gentle teasing regarding it in the first place, she didn't show it. The girl brought a palm to her stomach and seemed to gauge her hunger, her eyes vacating for a second. "Mm… I'm hungry," Kirika determined as her reddish-brown gaze shed its glassy texture and found Mireille again.

"We'll get lunch," Mireille said, her smirk softening to sympathetic. There wasn't a scrap of food in the house however, apart from the crumbs leftover from the young women's modest breakfast. On top of that immediate food shortage, groceries to last the next four days or so had to be picked up too. Mireille wasn't thrilled about walking out of whatever protection the safehouse afforded a second time into the hot zone of Kawasaki streets with who knew what eyes waiting there in alleys and windows; Soldats' or Ishinimori's. Both sides knew Mireille and Kirika's faces, and the blonde had hindrances in blending into a crowd to boot. It was Mireille's plan to maintain as low a profile as possible, with staying indoors the crux to the whole strategy. But she and Kirika had to eat, and so leaving the house for the streets was inescapable. That all said, Mireille would embrace getting out of the house she had been combing the filthy corners of for the morning's majority, thankful for the change of scenery and the fresh air. It would be the last excursion outside though before they made their move on Ishinomori and her allies, she resolved.

Mireille's brow creased slightly as she looked Kirika up and down. "But you're not heading outdoors in those clothes," she insisted. Kirika's baggy jumper and her shorts were cute, and the skin they bared lovely indoors, but outside the cold would sting that vulnerable flesh as though it were the pricking of a thousand needles. The inured assassin might not feel it, but Mireille would on her behalf every time she looked upon her thin coverings and the goose pimples on her legs and chest that they neglected to protect. Mireille empathised too ardently when Kirika was the concern. Her heart possessed the frost of the wintry weather outside for most, but it ignited into a fire in her breast for Kirika.

Mireille pinched hold of Kirika's dust cloth between her thumb and index finger and dragged it loose from under her partner's hand. She gingerly dangled it by a corner in front of Kirika's face and then waved it with flicks of her wrist, the bottom corner tickling the girl's nose. "Go change into something warmer," Mireille prodded.

"Okay." Kirika wrinkled her irritated nose and then wandered off into the bedroom they had claimed as theirs for the duration of their residence.

"Bring a coat," Mireille added just as her partner turned into a blur behind stained glass.

Mireille clutched the banister in her left hand and leaned back against it, one bare foot lifting to press against a railing. She glanced down at the cloth in her other hand, and then draped it quickly over the banister in minor distaste, glad to be rid of the dirty rag it was. She would toss it in the bin later before Kirika got it into her head to take it up again and resume dusting. A clean house to live in was all well and good, but Mireille would not tolerate Kirika becoming Soldats' maid, even if it were her partner's former home.

It didn't take too long for Kirika to emerge from the bedroom in warmer attire. Gone were her skimpy shorts-their departure mourned a tiny bit by Mireille-and exchanged for a brown pair of trousers, and her previously bare feet had been tucked into snug white socks. She still wore her pink knit jumper, but it was under a tan anorak now that should keep her nice and cosy.

Mireille dipped her head smartly, smiling primly in approval.

As for the blonde's own attire, it wasn't exactly winter wear. But the sun was out and shining bright, which took most of the chill from the day. Mireille had on white pants that were suitable enough for the weather, but her purple top was almost completely backless, the only attempt at covering focused merely on her front. However, the woman's long mane of flaxen tresses cascaded over her shoulders and at least halfway down her back, providing an effective blanket until Mireille could throw on her coat. Anyway, it was Kirika who had to be bundled up and protected from the cold. Mireille could dress how she pleased and as scantily as she pleased if she felt style was worth the cost of goose bumps and shivers. Kirika needed looking after when it came to everyday things like this. Mireille did not. She could take care of herself.

Mireille pushed herself off the banister and made for the stairs, but thinking better of leaving it behind, suddenly stopped for a second to turn back and snatch up the dirty cloth from where she dispensed with it. Better to have it in the rubbish where it belonged as soon as possible.

Mireille walked down the stairs, and as she passed through the kitchen she made a brief detour to the bin. She heard Kirika emit a breathless squeak when she stepped on the lever to flip the lid and then dropped the rag inside, but the girl didn't speak up any further. Kirika had to have known that her older companion would have overturned any objection.

With a manner of indifference projected about her to underplay her prior action and thwart would-be protest from Kirika, Mireille tarried no more and smoothly and crisply left the kitchen and proceeded for the genkan at the front door with Kirika dragging her feet behind, the Japanese girl casting a somewhat disappointed look back at the bin.

Delicately Mireille lowered her right foot down into the genkan and then its mate after it, the tiles sudden sheets of ice underneath her soles. She kicked the two shoes that comprised the pair that had been abandoned here after her outing last evening to a spot in front of her, and then slid her feet into them. They were open shoes with high heels-not totally fitting for the conditions outside, but they coordinated fantastically with the woman's ensemble.

Kirika stuffed her feet into her little pink shoes next to Mireille, which rather clashed with her brown trousers. Come to think of it, her pink jumper didn't harmonise favourably to the eye either.

Mireille sighed, watching her partner out of the corner of her eye while bending at the knees and reaching down to fasten her shoes' ankle straps. Kirika's fashion sense still needed a lot of grooming. Mireille was trying, but she suspected there was nothing to even build on making it an exasperating schooling even for one as au fait of chic as her. The blonde wondered whether she should take to laying out clothes for Kirika every morning to go with already choosing and buying them for her. Before they had inexorably grown close, Mireille hadn't cared one whit what Kirika looked like as long as she was worthwhile to her vendetta against Soldats. However, now the girl's poor dress sense was beginning to invoke… embarrassment in Mireille. Not much, and while Kirika's appearance did reflect on Mireille it was largely embarrassment for the clueless girl's sake over the blonde's own. Kirika was a pretty girl, and it didn't do her justice to be bedecked sloppily. Mireille aspired for her to take pride in her appearance. She wanted Kirika to know how to dress herself in way that helped exude to the world just how beautiful she was.

Even so, Kirika's naivety concerning something Mireille set plenty of esteem in was surprisingly endearing, and her apathy to vanity refreshing. Moreover, it was absolute Kirika. Mireille didn't want to impinge on that. She didn't want to change Kirika by any degree from the person who had thawed and captured her heart. Mireille could guide her to outgrow the stunting Altena had inflicted, but she would never force her to become something other than what she was at her heart. Herself. Innocence was a precious thing in this ugly world.

Mireille stood up and collected her coat from a nearby hook, putting it on and flipping her blonde hair out from the under the collar to tumble down her back and about her shoulders. She released the locks and unlatched the chain securing the front door, then opened it a crack just wide enough for one eye to peer through. That suspiciously narrowed blue eye scanned right and left while her hand snaked under her coat and behind her back to grip the handle of her Walther P99 in her pants. She dissected the area directly outside the house like only someone who walked the black path would; every scrap of foliage and patch of street scowled at guardedly for any blemishes on the commonplace; for any faceless figures skulking, the shade or the unassuming glossing over their malicious ambitions.

It was an empty and sedate street that Mireille's scrutiny divulged, the breeze and the birds its only inhabitants. The tension in her countenance cleared, and her grasp on the handle of her gun loosened. She supposed Soldats wouldn't make an attempt to rub her and Kirika out once and for all before they had completed what they were here to do at the organisation's-or specifically Breffort's-'suggestion'. That wasn't to say an underhanded attempt on the young women's lives from the secret society was out of the question. Who knew how splintered Soldats was? How deep and abundant the fissures ran? A faction inside Soldats that Breffort had no jurisdiction over could conceive an opportunity to rid their world order of a stinging stigma, whether for political favour or from simple spite. 'Soldats' and 'allies' went together like oil and water.

Mireille let go of her pistol altogether and opened the front door the rest of the way. A gust of chilled air billowed over her as if she had just opened a fridge, but it was warmer than it had been yesterday. The sky was vivid like a summer's day's, and if not for the lasting cold it could have passed as one.

Mireille stepped onto the porch and turned halfway back to Kirika, her look ushering the girl outside as well. She shut the door and locked it with the set of keys Jacques had handed to her before she had compelled him to disappear.

The pair walked down the porch steps and followed the path into the quiet and deserted street, Mireille still vigilant, and distrusting of that hush and dearth. She glanced up and down the road, but there was nothing remarkable, just the same as it had been yesterday evening under nightfall's cloak. Even in the bright of day it was unchanged. No venomous insects scuttled beneath rocks at Mireille and Kirika's appearance. They were by themselves.

Mireille blew a deep breath from between her dusky pink lips, clouding the air faintly. Putting herself under this undue stress was irrational. If a betrayal ensued, she would be ready to act accordingly. She was always ready for the sudden crack of gunshots and the whoosh of bullets. It was the nature of her chosen life. And as for Kirika….

The woman angled her eyes to docile Kirika at her right shoulder. Kirika…. There wasn't a moment Kirika wasn't in tune with her environment. In the tactical sense at any rate, Mireille revised as she weighed the often-oblivious Japanese teenager under her gaze. A smile touched her mouth. There was so much more to Kirika than the skilled assassin. It was those unseen facets that truly mattered; what defined her. What Mireille had fallen in love with.

Mireille and Kirika's feet took them along the street, the same route they had taken yesterday out of the suburbs and into the fringes of the city proper. The street kept up its vacancy save for them only for a few moments longer before Mireille sensed the tame movement of someone to her left. It was non-threatening; placid; and provoked no greater reaction than the turn of Mireille's head.

A middle-aged Japanese woman was kneeling in the dirt, gloved hands tending the shrivelled remains of a flowerbed in her front garden. A neighbour of the Yuumura household. She seemed real enough.

The woman looked up at Mireille and nodded her head a couple of times in greeting, her lined face cracking to direct a smile over the short brick garden wall keeping the pavement at bay.

Mireille returned it politely but did not slow, eager to keep moving and shun involved dialogue with anyone who wasn't Kirika. Trust was precious, as was her time, but too much secrecy or urgency attracted notice and stuck in people's memory. Mireille wanted to vanish from minds as she vanished from sight. Someone of her physique and appearance didn't have too great a hope of that here however, but she couldn't be the only blonde foreigner around.

Before Mireille could urge Kirika further down the street and escape herself, the older woman sunk hooks into her, gluing the assassin's feet abruptly to the pavement with her tongue. "You… on holiday?" she spoke in the slur of accented English, turning her gaze to the safehouse next door a second, and then dividing it between Mireille and Kirika inquisitively. "Are you on holiday here?" she repeated a second later much more easily in her native tongue.

"Ah…. Yes," Mireille said, having to consciously respond in Japanese to the parallel voice that was not Kirika's familiar softness. The perception of privacy violated had not dulled since her arrival in Japan yesterday. "For just a few days."

"Oohhh," the woman cooed, her head perking up as her interest did. "You can speak Japanese very well!" she applauded, once again in her naturally articulate native language.

"Thank you," Mireille accepted modestly. She had given a nugget of knowledge away-she was no clueless tourist. She had background with the country sufficient to justify her being fluent in the language. However, Mireille would not plod through a conversation in pigeon English when she could chat effortlessly in a more practiced tongue everyone here shared. She would not subject herself to that vexation, nor would she put this poor woman through it.

"I saw you move in next door yesterday," the woman went on, looking at the Yuumura household again.

"Yes, we're renting the house," Mireille improvised smoothly.

"Ohhh…!" the mature woman exclaimed as though a huge secret were revealed, or she had gotten a nice titbit of juicy gossip. She seemed the type to gossip over the garden fence with her equally nosy neighbours.

The woman's eyes drifted increasingly towards Kirika. Mireille could practically hear her speculation about Kirika. What was a foreigner like Mireille doing with a high school aged Japanese girl? And on vacation with her? Was she a friend? Was she a relative through marriage? What? Or maybe….

It was Mireille's cue to disappear from sight and mind, the latter if she still could at this point. The woman was a neighbour of the Yuumura family, which meant she could have been a neighbour of Kirika's unless she'd only just moved here-a long shot. Mireille wasn't sure what she'd do if the woman recognised her partner or what the repercussions would be. Become a vague memory.

Mireille inclined her head at the woman. "Nice meeting you," she said, terminating the conversation.

"Enjoy your stay!" the older woman said affably, but Mireille was already continuing down the street with Kirika. The blonde resisted the desire to place her hand on the base of Kirika's back to encourage her along, certain that the gesture would be spotted and broken down every which way for assessment by the woman they were evading. They had provided her with more than plenty gossip this afternoon.

It was unusual for her to be gardening in this cold weather, Mireille reflected as she put the neighbour several houses behind her and Kirika. Although, her plants had looked as if they had been starved for care. Middle-aged housewives had hobbies like that, didn't they? Gardening, sowing, Tupperware parties-well needed if dull distractions from their boring lives with their boring husbands once their children had fled the nest, Mireille imagined. She fervently prayed she didn't wind up in comparable stagnation in her later years. Being saddled with a husband was unthinkable, but she balked at the thought of her lapsing into an old fogey remembering and pining for her glory days while knitting ill-fitting sweaters and scarfs for Kirika in a rocking chair. But how could she really say? Maybe that kind of peace and relaxation she would be content with at that age, when her mind started to blunt and her muscles wilted to sluggish, and she couldn't maintain her fast paced life of murder for a price anymore. To pass the remaining years with Kirika in the tranquillity of holstered weapons and obscurity wasn't really so objectionable when Mireille thought about it, even now in her youth. Not being shot at or having to be on guard while walking the streets anymore would be liberating. However, she doubted she'd voluntarily retire at present. The thought of settling down was all well and good, but the reality of it was something else.

"Have you ever seen that woman before?" Mireille posed to Kirika on an idle whim, while gazing distantly ahead with her thoughts.

"Mm-mmm," Kirika denied, shaking her head.

* * *

The unceasing pounding of workmen's hammers were like bullets to the brain, each bang an explosive throb in Albert Laroque's head; his cranium the nail. He glared at his demolished window-once a proud hallmark of his beloved library-that the workmen standing on ladders crowded with their tools-day two of their repair efforts-hate in his squinting grey eyes behind his round spectacles that ticked in time with the hammering. Splintered wood and broken glass was still over the floor and on his desk, and more scattered under the windowsill in the grass on the other side, the clean up barely begun. The presence of the lowly peasants before him was repugnant, but the reason why he had to stomach their filth was the root of harsher loathing.

The window was the exit wound of a desecration-a violation. They had defiled his house-his *home*! They had killed his men, brought about damage; some lasting; to precious texts, and grievous of all; they had *stolen* from him! And not insignificant and abundant money, oh no, but one of the rarest of rare books, an artefact of Soldats history that he had taken great pains to seize into his possession: Langonel's Manuscript!

Albert ground his teeth-a meagre outlet for his rage. Three women and a man, or possibly two women and two men, his staff had reported the thieves two nights ago as. The security camera monitoring the front entrance of his estate had uselessly recorded indistinct figures and quick motions together with the murder of one of his guards before it and the rest of the cameras had been disabled. Pathetic fool. He had deserved death for his failure, just like the dozen or so others whose bodies had been disposed of straight after their discovery once the skirmishing had ebbed; buried, burnt, or ground up, whatever was done with spent underlings. Albert didn't care about them or their fate. What he did care about was getting their blood out of his expensive carpets. It had already crusted to an almost black shade. Albert was not looking forward to replacing the carpets if they couldn't be cleaned. Soldats had cleaning crews that specialised in just those sorts of tasks however, making it appear as if no one had fought and bled and died at a particular scene. Removing all trace, all evidence. Perhaps he would use his pull in Soldats to take advantage of their service. Efficiency and speed were vital to their job, and Albert would be pleased if his home was returned to its former pristine condition in the shortest period of irritation possible.

But not before the cataloguing was complete to the last tome. Langonel's Manuscript had been the obvious absence, but the thieves could have escaped with more. Albert had many, many priceless antiques, paintings, and books *meant* to be under safekeeping in his mansion. He had difficulty conceiving the intruders made off with only a solitary ill-gained prize, doubly so considering the sheer risk they had taken targeting *his* property. Albert Laroque did not stand for the pilfering of his treasured belongings. It was a *personal* affront repaid with systematic torture and a long, *long* time later with the offenders' and their family's lives. To insult him was to commit virtual suicide.

A portion of Albert's surviving men; the very best, the very brutal, who he trusted were more laudable then their butchered colleagues; were combing the boroughs of Paris day and night with blades and bullets to loosen tongues that would tell of the trail of the daring and soon-to-be caught thieves. They had the savvy to kill first and the smarts to not bother asking questions later. Ex-special forces, ex-hitmen, ex-human beings; they were soulless killers with military precision and armaments.

They had not delivered the ravaged bodies of the plunderers yet, however. There had been no word of their progress, if any. Thus Albert was left with his seething hate and indignant fury; left to pick up the pieces with the peasants while his knights hunted what was missing. Albert wanted Langonel's Manuscript returned to its esteemed place in his collection. He *needed* it. Not merely because it was his and a rare text, but it was linked to Soldats unlike any of his other books in his library. The council, being their omnipotent selves, doubtless knew of the burglary and loss. There had been no word from them, either.

Albert took to grinding the edge of his thumbnail between his teeth. The official opinion of the council was that Langonel's Manuscript was a disused remnant of a past age of Soldats, but that didn't make it worthless, did it? Not to Albert, and perhaps not truly to the council. Everyone who was anyone in Soldats knew of the subtle uprising Altena had reared. Of Noir's revival, and of Altena's betrayal. She had been untouchable in the Manor, and if not for her pets' own betrayal Albert might have had other concerns right now even more major than a lost book and a house ransacking. Like the Manor, which was spared a razing following Altena's revolt due to historical significance, Langonel's Manuscript was hallowed and safe from destruction. Moreover, it had a power in its pages like the Manor had in its brick and mortar. It had the power to inspire and unite, and to lend license to any Soldats-led crusade. It had been secure from said use in Albert's care; he had no aspirations beyond his hoarding. But having the book out there, loose in the world… it may incur the council's displeasure; displeasure directed upon him. Albert had to get Langonel's Manuscript back.

Albert raked the reedy wisps of grey hair over his balding scalp, his anxiously trembling skeletal fingers the hasty comb. With the perpetrators of his predicament still on the run out of reach of his hate, Albert turned to his men who were busy at the lower shelves around him. Many of his dear books had been desecrated in the burglary, stray bullets tearing through pages as though it were flesh. Paper couldn't bleed, but Albert was aware of his books' pain. He mourned for them. Albert would have traded the flesh for the paper if given the choice.

On top of logging what books were present and which were not, Albert's cataloguers sorted the irreparable from the salvageable. With latex gloves they worked, the latter books being piled on the floor in numerous stacks for later repair or more thorough examination, while the ruined were thrown aside into uncaring heaps. It broke Albert's heart… and infused it with rage. He couldn't be sure if the thieves had caused the damage or his men had in their thoughtless zeal to kill them-and his men would never own up to such a blunder, knowing the punishment they would suffer-but in Albert's eyes they were all to blame; directly or indirectly, blame was blame. His men could make amends in attending to the destruction and finding the thieves however, and moreover he needed them to do both. Plus with the council's fell gaze manoeuvring to hang over his head Albert might require them and their loyalty to shield him. It sickened him to be dependent on anybody; weak it was, pathetic; but he needed his bodyguards now more than ever.

Albert clapped his hands together sharply, the sound jarring amongst the blunt battering of hammers. "Faster! Faster!" he roared, going so far as to smack the nearest sorter on the back of his head. The reprimanded man's head pitched forwards with the cuff, but the pace at which he pulled books from the shelves and flicked through them to check for damage accelerated as though a gun was trained on him. Albert might be inclined to implement that kind of spur, but he would never carry it through should the man be too slow. He might get blood and brains on his books. His beloved tomes must experience no more maltreatment this day, or any other day if Albert had his way about it.

The Soldats member spat forth a grunt of disgust as he roughly straightened his tweed jacket, tugging on it so violently the fabric audibly snapped. Unable to bear the sight anymore, he stormed out of chaotic scene his dignified library had become.

Albert muttered irate and incoherent curses as he trudged hunched backed down the hall, glaring contempt at everything and everyone in it. He edged around the blackish patches in the carpet, spewing a particularly colourful cuss just for them as he did, and strode into the retreat of his lounge, closing the door behind him to the mess and the repairs; both equally as objectionable.

Albert headed for his bar, seeking the soothing effects of alcohol. He half-staggered as the boiling bile for what had taken place was usurped by cold fear at the repercussions. He slapped his hands on the bar to steady his lurch and squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments, going over the details and the potential consequences once more in his mind. If the council voted to move against him, he knew he was doomed. The generations his line had been immersed in Soldats intrigue would matter for naught and would come to a painful and ignoble end. Soldats was the world itself. Albert may hold out for a time, but no one could fight the world and hope to prevail. No one.

Slowly Albert's eyes opened and he found himself looking at the surface of the bar below his hanging head. And at an envelope. A letter that he had not seen before.

He swallowed, and fear's chill rushed through him like a winter wind's buffet. He expected a notice of execution, of Soldats' decision to expunge him from their world. He dreaded it.

Goaded by a sudden spike of defiant anger, Albert seized the unmarked letter in his hands and shredded it open, gnashing his teeth as though he were tearing it in his mouth instead. There was a folded piece of paper inside, slightly torn in Albert's mania to open it.

Feverishly the Soldats member unfolded it, his crazed eyes soaking up its words. There were only two. 'Kawasaki, Japan'. It was a message and a place rolled into one.

It took a second to filter through the agitation, but when it did a fiendish smile stretched Albert's thin and bloodless lips. This was not a notice of his execution. No, the only execution that was imminent was the thieves'.

* * *

Showered and in her pyjamas, it was an unrecognisable ceiling that hung above Kirika's indolent stare, neither was it the ceiling over her and Mireille's bedroom in Paris nor was it the one over her old bedroom mere footsteps down the hall. Kirika had gazed up at a lot of different ceilings in her short life, a new one for each lodging in a place that was far from home. A place where people died.

This ceiling was unlike any of those others. People would die; they always did whenever Kirika was away from home; but she wasn't lying in a hotel bedroom. Beneath her was not a bed countless travellers had spent nights in. She was in her old house, her old home, in what was supposed to be her parents' bedroom. That fact alone should have had connotations, significance-a child in their parents' bed. There should have been meaning in it.

Yet Kirika's parents weren't deceased or missing… they had simply never *been*. This bedroom could very well have been a hotel or boarding house's bedroom for as much personal worth it had for her. It had belonged to no one. It had never been used until now. Kirika lay on her parents' bed, in her parents' bedroom… but she thought little of it. It was just a room.

And it was Kirika and Mireille's room now. This house…. This house that had been hers and yet not hers, Soldats and no one's, it was little by little being instilled with vitality, with a peaceful energy, to become Kirika and Mireille's house as well. The dust and dirt Kirika had started work on removing early today was dispersing as the hours went by. The bricks and mortar that had belonged to a dream, the rooms that were haunted by miseries of the past; they were being revitalised. The dream solid reality, the miseries quiet memories. In Kirika's return with Mireille they had brought the spark of life to the empty house.

With that spark they were coaxing it out from the past and into the present where Kirika now thrived, washing away the dust of the old to usher in the shine of the new. This house was a part of Kirika's life, and now it had a new life like she had, too. It would be different this time. There was no loneliness here. Mireille, the heart made to match Kirika's, was here with her this time around. There would be no sorrow or longing.

There was even a peace here of the benign kind that Kirika had yearned for since she had realised her talent at taking lives. Today had been… ordinary. It had been calm, and mundane, and spent in the blissful company of Mireille. They had enjoyed normal activities together-shopping for groceries, eating lunch together, and walking side by side. Kirika had hoped during the last to be hand in hand, but her nerve still hadn't been there to make her wishes come alive. *That* she did ache for; that idyllic contact, that euphoric union of touches. Despite Kirika trying for openness with her caring partner, expressing that sort of want to the woman was something else altogether, something beyond the scope of her other thoughts and emotions, something that she only possessed a vague comprehension of. It was not something she knew *how* to express. The words to describe it eluded her, leaving only innate feelings to illustrate her need, feelings that were trapped inside her while she struggled to find a way to get them out, to convey them. The want to be close… as close as two people could be. Touching… embracing… their bodies melded together like one. Joined hearts and joined minds, and joined bodies. Complete companionship.

Kirika wondered if Mireille had the same dreams. If she felt the same ache as Kirika did. Mireille probably understood it perfectly.

Kirika sighed quietly and slid her hands up from her sides to be a pillow behind her head. Regardless, she had liked today. They had not been the streets of Paris that she and Mireille had strolled, not the streets of home, but it had been nice. Kirika and Mireille could have really been on holiday like the blonde had told that lady instead of waiting for the prime window to end lives. There were four more days of it to look forward to. At least, Kirika hoped that those days would be as serenely uneventful as today had been. A holiday in truth.

[…As long as there are people, peace will pass like the seasons. Wither and brown like Autumn leaves, and fall away….]

Kirika closed her eyes. She did her best to concentrate on the muffled rush of spraying water through the wall over the melodious whisper in her mind. Mireille was in the bathroom having a shower in preparation for bed, not far along the hall. Kirika wasn't alone. Today wouldn't be spoiled. There was nothing in her head. There was nothing in the dark.

[As long as there is sin, there will be darkness.]

Kirika swallowed and rolled onto her side, eyes open, towards the other half of the bed. The sheets and pillow had smelt musty yesterday, but they now smelt faintly of Mireille. Of the scent of her shampoo and conditioner she lathered into her long hair and of the perfume and creams she applied to her body… and of uniquely Mireille, the wonderful fragrance the woman created herself. It smelt like their bed at home did.

The glass of the bedroom's door dimmed, and Kirika realised she hadn't heard the sound of water cease.

The door, ajar, creaked further open, and Mireille appeared from around it. A towel was wrapped around her torso covering her from her chest to just over the tops of her thighs, while a second towel she used in her right hand to mop up the water soaked in her lank tresses. Blonde strands stuck to her cheeks and chest in places, and droplets of moisture that ran from their ends glistened even in the weak light of the bedroom as they slipped and slid over her alabaster skin.

Their eyes met. Mireille smiled at Kirika; a lazy, relaxed smile born of warmth and familiarity.

And Kirika knew peace once again. She smiled back just as comfortably and placidly, the voices in her mind silenced as they beheld it all. Her faith.

There were sinners and there was darkness, and Kirika was acquainted with the worst of both. She *was* of the worst. But that didn't mean the world was empty of saints and light. There was no night that lasted forever. Dawn would always rise. If peace could pass like the seasons, so could bloodshed.

[Peace is an illusion the wishful and the helpless cling to while they huddle in the dark….]

Maybe, Kirika spoke in her mind. But right at this moment, it didn't matter.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

Do I have anything important to say? Nope!


	20. The Hourglass

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twentieth chapter. The build up to action! The first scene is based off a particular Noir artwork, or at least Mireille and Kirika's outfits are. Hopefully it's clear which artwork!

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 20 – The Hourglass

Kirika lay on her stomach; the tatami mats a comfy padding beneath her prostrate slender body. A yellow sundress was draped over that willowy frame, and what of her legs it left naked idly treaded the air above her bottom, bare feet swaying gently as though subject to the whims of a breeze. The dress was thin, light and airy, hanging from her slight figure by slim shoulder straps running over her bare back and upper chest; summer wear not for the cold weather outside. But Kirika was cosy. Inside the living room it was pleasantly toasty, the heating turned up to mimic the absent warm summer afternoon.

Kirika's crossed arms were a cushion beneath her chin, as well as a prop to keep her head upright and her eyes comfortably in line with the television a distance away in the kitchen. A bread crust wagged to and fro and gradually shortened where it dangled from her working mouth, the sodden end between her lips absently nibbled on above a plate of crumbs that was all else that represented a ham and cheese sandwich lunch after the girl had sated her rumbling tummy.

There was nothing particularly captivating on television, but it was interesting nonetheless to Kirika. She hadn't seen any Japanese programs in a very long time; not since she'd last been in Japan; but they were about the same as French shows in how peculiar they were. People were pictured doing all sorts of activities; a lot Kirika didn't understand; things and events were promoted and publicised; again many completely new and baffling; and pantomimes of lives were played out as though real; and the viewer with a spyglass into their intimacies. Television was oft times educational but mostly entertainment, Mireille had said. Kirika supposed it was intriguing seeing how other people lived even if they were lives conceived by someone's imagination, however that idea that they were fictitious was too near a match for what her life had once been. Before coming to her former home Kirika couldn't watch those peeping programs for too long before ill memories started to stir up that she'd rather leave still. It was all right now, though. She was reminded of how her past life shared similarities to the scripting of television dramas when she viewed them, but the reminder brought nothing else with it to create an upsetting union anymore. No harboured bad feelings, no gnawing longings. Kirika was at peace with that time, that life, and free from its haunting.

Moreover, she was free to enjoy television further. Kirika didn't derive that much enjoyment from it really, but her favourite programs were the variety where people were depicted in romantic situations. She liked seeing what sorts of things they did to express their feelings for one another. However, there was frequently some obstacle to plague the couple's love, usually someone else who too had affection for one of the pair. Those kinds of developments scared Kirika and made her wonder if she and Mireille might maybe face comparable problems. There seemed to be so *many* potential hurdles for love. And Mireille was acquainted with a lot of people, and probably more that Kirika didn't even know about. What if she liked one of them? What if she liked one of them more than her? But then Kirika was sure she was the closest person to Mireille; the blonde did seem to spend nearly all of her moments with her. They were partners too, after all. Yet in those shows nothing appeared to totally rule out the chance of a third party entering the scene, vying for the attention of the woman or man with the hopes of stealing their heart away from their beloved. Kirika had learned to change the channel quickly when she disliked what she saw. Besides, she still hadn't discovered any programs concerning loving partnerships between women, and that was what she really had an interest in. Romance involving women and men were okay, but until Kirika found what she was really looking for they would never hold her curiosity for long.

Sometimes Kirika saw the news broadcast. Mireille liked to watch it every now and then, so Kirika watched it with her, mimicking the woman's interest. The girl didn't actually have a care for what was happening around the rest of the world, but solely sought to share the time and activity with her adored partner. Kirika's whole world of interest took up only the modest space of the living room-the room where Mireille and herself resided. Wherever Mireille went Kirika's entire world traveled with her.

Content humming shaped a peaceful song in Kirika's world, underscoring the laid-back ambiance of it in beautiful tones. The hummed melody was heard above anything the television quietly droned, and it was that which Kirika really listened to. Serenity played in Kirika's heart in harmony with the dulcet voice, a singer who could always sooth her soul with her ease. Hearing-knowing-that Mireille was happy inspired Kirika to feel the same, to be absorbed in her love's mood. She didn't know the song, but the blonde's humming was almost a lullaby for Kirika, charming her eyelids to droop lazily and her body to wilt, and hushing the thoughts in her head. Kirika dreamt of curling up beside Mireille while she hummed, slumbering under the blue gaze and silky voice of the one she loved.

Kirika's eyes, struggling against drowsiness, turned to Mireille who seemed oblivious to the seducing her contentment weaved. She sat to the left of Kirika near another side of the kotetsu, bent forwards at the waist and her knees drawn up close to her chest, focused on her bare feet that were angled upwards for the benefit of her vision. With a little bottle in one hand and its lid equipped with a tiny brush underneath in the other, she was busy painstakingly painting each of her toenails a shade of lavender. White cotton balls were stuffed between her toes; Kirika had seen Mireille do the like before, but she still hadn't figured out why it was necessary. They forced the blonde's toes to separate and stay that way. Was it to make the nails easier to paint? Why didn't Mireille stick cotton balls between her fingers when she painted her fingernails? Kirika was reasonably sure colouring her nails was to make them prettier; another of Mireille's beautifying treatments. But that was all she was sure of. Mireille didn't need to paint her nails to become more beautiful. Kirika believed her beautiful just the way she came.

Mireille wore a dress like Kirika did, and it was lavender like the colour the woman was painting her toenails. Kirika didn't know if there was any deliberate connection, but it made a good match. Mireille's dress was longer than Kirika's, coming midway down her shins, and covered her more completely with sleeves a little past her wrists and only a shallow scoop neck letting her collar bones show. It was rather form fitting however, conforming to the curves and swells of Mireille's figure like a satin glove did to a hand. Now that Kirika reflected on it, most of Mireille's clothing enjoyed having a close embrace over her body, smoothing over flaring hips and rising chest. Yet this dress, being in one piece from top to bottom, seemed to cling to and accentuate her physique more than usual. Kirika liked looking at her.

At Mireille's edge of the kotetsu sat a few spare cotton balls the blonde hadn't found a use for yet, and an empty plate and juice glass that had once borne her sandwich and water respectively. Kirika's empty glass was on the floor nearby like her lunch plate, although an orange pool collected at its bottom told of her different choice of beverage to her partner. Mireille had seen to mealtime with some of the groceries she and Kirika had fetched three days ago. Three days of respite. Three days of mundane mornings, average afternoons, and everyday evenings.

It hadn't been boring. Maybe some people would have been fed up with nothing to do for three whole days aside from for what could be pursued as entertainment in the house's confines, but Kirika was not one of those people. There was plenty for her to absorb her time with here. Moreover, they were pleasant pursuits. Lounging in bed, on the floor, by a window-anywhere she found herself, with dreams and musings drifting through her head to steal away all sense of time; watching curious television programs; cooking with her partner and together eating the products of their labours; the nights spent in utter delight reclining beside the blonde woman in bed; and most of all admiring Mireille with an unobtrusive joy. Simple pleasures belonging to a simple life. For someone whose life had never been simple, it was bliss. It was peace.

Mireille wasn't one of those people who got anxious while caged by four walls either. She was perfectly at ease, using the time as though they were back home again after their return from the Manor; much like Kirika was, the girl herself realised. Mireille was always doing something; if she was not drinking tea while attentive to her laptop's bright glow, then she was teasing Kirika with playful puzzlements that were amusing to her but eccentric to her dark-haired junior. She sometimes joined Kirika in viewing Japanese TV too, and also shared in being a bit nonplussed with it going by the looks on her face. Mireille didn't devote much time to watching unless the news was on following that initial sampling, but even then she favoured the screen of her laptop noticeably more than she did the screen of the television.

Kirika longed for the hours to never expire, for the minutes to stretch on and on forever and ever. For day to never fall into dusk. But naught save Kirika's love for Mireille lasted forever. Time took no reprieve and it gave none; trickling away second by second without end. Only one more dawn remained. One more day of quiet. Today was that day. Kirika tried to keep her thoughts apart from the looming reality, but too frequently they eluded her barricades in her more negligent moments. The black clouds amassing over her dawn. There were not many grains of sand left to run through the hourglass, and no means to shatter it.

While Kirika continued to treat her eyes and chew the last of her bread crust, Mireille delicately applied one finishing stroke of the brush to her right pinky toenail, completing the lavender set of ten. The woman's content smile turned fuller with fulfillment as she reviewed her titivating toil for a second, before she then started plucking the half a dozen squeezed cotton balls out from the recesses separating her toes. She tossed the used cotton balls heedlessly on the kotetsu without a look, too rapt in admiring the painted procession she had fashioned.

Kirika admired too, but from Mireille's toes all the way to the top of her flaxen head. Every part of the wonderful woman kept her enthralled.

When the sixth cotton ball had been discarded, Mireille lifted and scrunched her toes in the fresh freedom. Her gaze then rose and met Kirika's over the kotetsu with aplomb as though she had been conscious of the scrutiny the entire time, the skies in her eyes open and inviting, drawing the younger girl in.

"Would you like to help me?"

Kirika wasn't sure how she could help exactly, and her head sagged to the side under the weight of trying to figure it out. Regardless, she did want to assist her partner in any way she could.

The bewilderment must have showed, because Mireille grinned at Kirika with humour but also patience in her expression-indulgent of her less worldly companion as always. "Blow on them. It will help them dry faster." Mireille pushed her feet forward across the tatami mats a little, the motion attracting Kirika's attention and feeding her understanding.

Kirika crawled over the floor by her elbows and on her stomach until Mireille's presented feet were framed in her vision. Still uncertain, and scared to blow too hard in case she ruined Mireille's work, Kirika simply looked at the blonde's feet for several moments. They were pretty, she thought. Dainty, but not so dainty they were too small for her. They looked so soft and supple despite the uncomfortably shaped shoes Mireille liked to cram them inside or strap on them even if she knew that she and Kirika would see a lot of running around because of skirmishes or being on assignment. Mireille did take care of every aspect of her body with her creams and lotions and things, and it apparently made the difference.

Still with merely her baited breathing on Mireille's feet, Kirika gingerly lowered her head close and choose to blow softly on the wet toenails, her cheeks puffing out and her lips puckering. They were shy exhalations, but enough to speed the paint to dry without harming it, she hoped. The wet lacquer's aroma was strong and almost heady this near and Kirika wrinkled her nose, but she ignored it for the most part.

"That tickles," Mireille remarked. Kirika immediately stopped blowing and lifted her head, emitting a peep of worry while finding her partner's eyes, apology in her own. "It's alright," Mireille reassured, beaming down a calming smile upon Kirika prone before her. A hand came up, somewhat tentatively, slow in its indecision, but gently the blonde combed her fingers through Kirika's shaggy hair, pushing the girl's bangs back from her forehead. Mireille's right hand lingered on top of Kirika's head, and her thumb softly stroked the skin she had bared. It was the tranquility of the last three days at its sweetest, and Kirika basked in the unexpected attention and intimate sensations. Kirika maintained the gaze she shared with her partner, but the look in Mireille's eyes, though directed that way, didn't seem to meet hers. It seemed to go through Kirika, like the woman was looking at something else in her place, or something only she could see.

In a snap of eyelids it was over, and Mireille's eyes could see the real world once more. The blonde smiled a bit bigger and rubbed Kirika's head, tousling her hair some more, and then took her hand away to take the lid with brush from the paint bottle that she had put down on the floor. She tilted her left hand up at the wrist and fanned out her fingers, inspecting her nails for a second. In the next she was coating her fingernails with the lavender hue in vertical strokes away from her body, returning to dip the brush in the bottle every few thereafter.

Kirika went back to blowing, a touch disappointed that the special moment had passed. There would be others, but she wanted every one to go on for eternity. There was always that little disappointment afterwards when they fell short. Time stopped for nothing, not even love.

Kirika blew and blew until Mireille told her that was plenty, and then the girl laid her head on top of her folded hands once again and stared up at her beloved while each fingernail was painted. It didn't take too long with Mireille's experience at doing such aesthetic endeavours.

Mireille screwed the lid on the bottle securely and placed it on the kotetsu, and then she leaned forward, balancing her arms on her raised knees and dangling her hands in front of Kirika's face. "Now blow," she instructed blithely, giving Kirika a wink.

Kirika sat up on her elbows and did as she was asked in earnest, keen to please and unwilling to disappoint. Mireille grinned, amused at Kirika's diligence. "Maybe I can do your nails some time," she proposed impishly.

Kirika didn't know how to take that. Blanching thoughts of the lots of times she had been taken clothes shopping and coaxed into dressing up in different outfits and directed to stand in as many different positions entered her mind. She supposed it would be interesting and Mireille would have fun… and it was only her nails… but then how many colours of polish did the woman have? Kirika could imagine Mireille trying them all out on her one after the other. In one session. Until all the shades were exhausted… at least until she bought more. Fashion was as serious for Mireille as being an assassin was.

Mireille's limp hands suddenly came to life and the blonde tweaked Kirika's nose between the knuckles of her first two fingers of her right hand. "All done!" She winked again. "Thank you!"

Kirika smiled, happy to have been useful. Useful for something unrelated to the grisly art she had been intended for. Yet most of all, to have been useful to Mireille.

Mireille leaned back and admired her nails some more; at range straightening her arms out, and up close with her hands near to her face. Kirika watched, pleased that Mireille was pleased, and that she'd had a role in it, if minor.

Mireille's left hand stayed at her eye level, its fingernails still being appreciated, but meanwhile her right stole under the kotetsu. When the latter reappeared, it bore something Kirika had not wanted to see in Mireille's grasp until tomorrow-if not ever again.

Mireille tapped her index finger on the trigger guard of her Walther P99 as she held it aloft, barrel aimed at the ceiling. The pretense of admiring her nails was dropped, as was her left hand, and the assassin looked Kirika in the eye. A flash of uncertainty streaked across Mireille's visage and for a second her gaze fled Kirika's. But Mireille was never uncertain and never afraid; or seldom showed either frailty at any rate. The slippage was redressed almost instantly; the mask straightened back into seamless place.

The tapping on the pistol stopped. "Let's get it done," Mireille said simply. She put on a supportive face, her smile straining to hold.

Kirika bowed her head and lowered her gaze; the best nod of acknowledgement she could give. She glanced under the kotetsu where her own weapon still remained in hibernation, yet close by should it need to be abruptly awakened. Kirika had tried to ignore it and Mireille's weapon, but they had been constant companions to each young woman throughout the days and nights of peace. Constant companions, and constant reminders of the times of war on the horizon.

Kirika slowly reached under the table and retrieved her dormant sidearm. As more of the final grains of sand filtered through the hourglass, the more substance the illusion shed. A flake of normality peeled away with each grain lost, the illusion's cohesion shaking loose in the final day, the final hours. Not once in three days was the reason that Kirika and Mireille were in Japan brought up. Not once since the first night were Jacque's documents touched. Not once since the first morning was there an indication of anything terrible ahead beyond the guns the pair always carried with them. The guns, the only sign, had ultimately been the downfall of the innocence. Even a single sign was too many.

Kirika reluctantly sat up in front of the kotetsu and arranged her legs into a kneeling position. She laid her Beretta M1934 on the small table and then placed her hands on her lap. Her hands clenched her thighs while she stared at the weapon.

"I'll get the cleaning equipment," Mireille said quietly before standing up, pistol still in hand, and disappeared into the kitchen and up the stairs. Kirika could feel her depart, but her eyes were affixed to the pistol that was left behind.

Unthinkingly-instinctively-Kirika's hands left her thighs and went for the gun. Her gun. She hadn't owned it for long, but it was identical to its predecessor. A program ran in her head, a series of instructions she mechanically followed with an otherwise blank mind. Reflexes took over her limbs, intuition powering every movement.

Kirika pushed the magazine catch of her gun to the rear and popped out the clip, placing it on the table. In a quick motion she pulled back the slider and then let it snap back into place, and a bullet was ejected out of the chamber and into the air. The assassin snatched it before it hit the table, and then sat it on its end beside the magazine.

Kirika turned the safety backwards and drew the slider back once again, but this time locked it in position with the safety lever. The barrel exposed, Kirika pushed it from the front and unseated it from the frame, before effortlessly lifting the entire metal tubing out of the pistol. Precisely she laid the detached barrel horizontally on the kotetsu above the clip and solitary live round.

Kirika turned the safety lever down, unlocking the slider, and then pushed the latter forward until it slid completely free. She added that part to the growing collection on the table.

She tugged the recoil spring out from the front of what remained of the gun and removed it from the guide it coiled around, lying both below the slider and barrel.

Finally she twisted the safety lever loose and set that down; followed after by what was only a shell of a gun now-the handle more or less-alongside the other dissembled parts. The Beretta had been dismantled in less than fifteen seconds, perhaps as few as ten. Kirika had never actually timed herself, but the gun was in pieces before her conscious mind caught up to the fact. She could have broken it down with her eyes closed. And put it back together again just as fast.

Mireille wasn't long in returning. She sat herself down flanking Kirika, near, at the kotetsu on the girl's right. It was a small gesture, but it didn't go unnoticed by Kirika. Mireille could have elected to sit opposite her, the closest table edge coming from the kitchen and one that would have offered more room for her to take apart her firearm. Yet she hadn't. A small gesture… but it meant something to Kirika.

Mireille placed her Walther P99 in front of her and a box containing an aerosol can of compressed air, another can of lubricant, cleaning solvent, a couple of cloths and piles of patches, two cleaning rods, and a pair of bore brushes corresponding to the calibre of each woman's pistol in the middle on the table. The compressed air was a more delicate yet still thorough method for cleaning the pistols' inner workings. It would clear out any dust and grime that had accumulated through service and in the aftermath of cleaning in strong, concentrated blasts of air. It even had a fairly lengthy tube-like nozzle for convenience. Cloths still had their place however, and were used for polishing the exteriors of the weapons' frames. The lubricant was for limiting the friction of the working parts and preventing the solidification of firing residue, the bore brush for cleaning the barrels, the small square patches-endowed with a woven side and a fibrous side-along with the solvent for cleaning everything else internal that the air had failed to dislodge, and the cleaning rod to squeeze the equipment into those internals. It was quite an involved undertaking, but repeated practice had seen it become a methodical and rapid ritual for Kirika and Mireille, much like the breaking down of their weapons beforehand.

"We'll need to find a secluded location to squeeze off a few rounds," Mireille commented as she pulled the ammunition clip from her pistol and put it on the kotetsu. "I'm not confident that the back garden is a sufficient width for long range practice." She yanked back the slider and then let it slam forward into its rest position while angling the gun toward the table, ensuring the bullet that flew out made its landing there. The 9mm Parabellum round bounced several times and rolled along the table, but before it could drop off the edge and onto the floor Mireille cupped it with her hand. "And there's the chance one of the nosy neighbours might hear the shots, even with silencers." She sat the lone bullet with its peers in the magazine. "They might even be nosy enough to take a peek over the fence. I don't like having to go outside before it's time, but…."

Kirika stretched forward over the table to grab the can of compressed air and then picked up the slider of her dismantled Beretta M1934. "I know a place," she said softly, spraying a burst of air along the length of the metal fixture's insides.

* * *

Kirika traipsed through the thick, lush carpet; deeply green and nourished though never tended to her knowledge. Dew still clung to the soft blades that rose tall enough in their neglect to tickle her ankles, wetting the girl's sandaled feet that had to lift a little higher than the grasses' peak to get by. The wind finished what the damp started, chilling each foot an extra degree throughout their time hovering over the grasses' shag. It was strong here, its howl drowning out any other sound, even those from the street where the Yuumura house stood left not far back.

But civilisation felt miles vanished in the dense verdancy. Wild bamboo interweaved to form a virtually unbroken screen to hold suburbia at bay, and their mingling grew friendlier the further Kirika and Mireille went on. It was a veritable hidden meadow in an otherwise urban sprawl. Kirika supposed it could have been thought of as peaceful and quaint, but sadly more sinister connotations had been laid within her when she had first discovered it. The secret aspect of the meadow would always remain its most distinguishing tone, for secrets had been revealed inside its bamboo shelter.

It was a dreamscape to Kirika, another memory drawn out from her mind and inserted into reality. She had killed here. She had killed here among the bamboo and grass for the first time; *she* had, the girl who had opened her eyes to over a decade spent and the memory of it gone-Kirika Yuumura. And she had killed with natural instinct and fatal precision, without thought given to extinguishing the lives before the deed was done. It was here that Kirika had recognised the myth that had been her normal life, and saw the blood and sin that stained her hands.

The nostalgia had returned, but nothing darker clung to it. If sentiments of sorrow or longing converged, they lacked the potency to threaten Kirika's heart. As Mireille had said, the past had past, and nothing would change it. That was fine. The past had paved the path to the present, and Kirika didn't yearn for that past changed anymore. It wasn't perfect, but Kirika had her happiness and was grateful for it. If nothing else ever bettered, if she never reached the horizon she saw, she would at least have that. Kirika would at least have her. She was the centre of everything. She *was* everything.

The girl glanced back at the radiant beauty that tailed her, she whom Kirika clutched on to in the black world's darkness, the light in the shadow personified; the angel in the sinners' midst. As long as Kirika had Mireille and her love everything would be all right. And there would still always be hope for that better tomorrow, always, every moment she gazed into the dreamy blue of Mireille's eyes.

"How much further is it?" Mireille said as though sensing Kirika's look, her voice clearly fighting to keep the gripe out of it but tinged with complaint nonetheless. She was hunched slightly and her head was down, her hair falling past her cheeks, and she shot a sharp breathe cantankerously past her teeth while she looked where her feet were plodding through the thick and soggy grass. Those feet were clad only in sandals like Kirika's feet, and were just as ineffective at withstanding the wet and cold. Kirika hoped the painstaking adorning Mireille had given her toenails less than an hour ago weren't being spoilt in the dew.

The blonde's left fist held the bunched bottom of her dress taut out to the side and raised up near knee level, allowing her legs to move with a little more freedom. Kirika could see that the ball of cloth in her hand and the slanted hem across her shins were dark from the soaking the caressing blades of grass had given them before the woman had decided to let just her feet and ankles suffer the dousing. Kirika began to worry and doubt herself in choosing to come to the seclusion here. She and Mireille wore coats over their thin dresses, but it was short-term warmth and wouldn't fend off the unpleasant conditions at length. Kirika didn't picture them remaining more than fifteen or so minutes anyway, and neither did Mireille she expected, or else the woman would have insisted her younger partner prepare herself better for the cold weather before taking one step out the door.

Kirika and Mireille would stay just long enough behind the bamboo curtain to expend a clip or two to test their firearms and their own accuracy. Their accuracy was practically always rated one hundred percent, however. Kirika only remembered one occasion when Mireille's aim was off, horribly off; when they were to confront Intoccabile in Sicily, an old and feared childhood friend of the blonde's. Moreover, it was the only time Kirika had seen the normally cool, calm and collected Mireille scared of anybody-*really* scared. It had been interesting for Kirika to witness and frightening all at once. The experience had caused novel and potent emotions and desires in Kirika. Mireille, once so strong, had appeared so vulnerable-fallible after all. Kirika had wanted to shelter her. She had wanted to protect her; watch over her. From then on, Kirika always did.

That incentive to protect had no limits, covering the more trivial hazards as well as the deadlier ones common to their line of work. Regardless of how little time they might spend here, Kirika wished Mireille would button her coat. Mireille had told her to zip up. If Kirika had to do it, why didn't Mireille? It was actually harder to defend Mireille from the minor threats than it was to guard her with a gun in hand. Usually Kirika was left to fret helplessly, assisting her love merely when it would be accepted and not deemed presumptuous, invading. Mireille had a liberty with her that Kirika didn't have with the older woman. It tied Kirika's already hesitant tongue and shied away her helping hands, and abandoned her heart to worry.

The grassy carpet took a sudden dip, and Kirika dallied at its summit for a moment. "Not much further," she said quietly, her voice nearly whipped away by the wind.

Kirika negotiated the fairly steep slope more slowly and carefully than the last time she had, back then skidding down its span with a Soldats execution squad at her heels, their bullets whistling about her fleeing body and spurring her haste. It had ended in the clearing below, where the wind through the bamboo funneled a million shrieks into a single roar-the pursuit and their lives… Kirika's life then included.

When Kirika reached the bottom of the incline she turned back to see how Mireille was progressing. The woman navigated the slope even more slowly and carefully than Kirika had, her high-heeled sandals seeming to inhibit her step and unsteady her balance. She had pulled the hem of her dress higher up her legs now to compensate, her left knee almost showing, and her eyes were still weighing her footing.

After Mireille had inched a bit closer to the base of the hill she took a quick glance up at where Kirika waited and then seeing how near the girl was, held out a hand toward her. Before Kirika could ponder that hand however, all of sudden Mireille's right foot skidded over the wet grass and she pitched dangerously forward, as if on the verge of stumbling ungainly down the slope. Kirika's raw instincts and groomed reflexes took over from her indolent musings and timid protocol relating to the blonde and she simply reacted to the perilous predicament her love was in. Kirika grabbed Mireille's reaching hand in a firm clasp and braced herself, her arm becoming an unyielding support of muscles for her partner to lean against and use to regain equilibrium.

Once Mireille's footing had been found again, the woman looked up and rewarded Kirika a sheepish look but grateful smile with it before easing the rest of the way down the hill, holding her partner's hand as escort for every subsequent step.

"Sorry…." Kirika said mournfully when Mireille was safely on level ground. She let her hand become flaccid and drop from Mireille's, although she grieved for its departure. That said, she had felt unfit of the privilege. Her head hanged to the ground, and she looked down at her toes and Mireille's more ostentatious ones close by. They looked shiny all wet.

"You're not at fault for my questionable grace," Mireille shrugged off while missing some of that spoken grace in her feigned frivolity, her antagonism discernibly subjugated for Kirika's welfare. "Neither of us are dressed for it and you did just fine," she added after a moment of thought.

Kirika knew she was just being kind, and the last especially backfired from being a fortifying comfort. It engendered a lament in Kirika that she hadn't better informed Mireille about the terrain ahead. Mireille could have hurt herself, and surely she would have had an easier time of it getting to the clearing if Kirika had had the prudence. Perhaps it wasn't only Kirika's apprehension that impeded her capacity to tend to Mireille's wellbeing. She had a lot to learn. However, Kirika was in the company of the most capable person to teach her.

Kirika and Mireille were here now and nothing of their attire or condition could be improved this late. Putting it out of her mind as far as she could, which wasn't so far as to be completely forgotten since it pertained to Mireille, Kirika swung her doleful eyes from her and her love's waterlogged feet to the clearing's round expanse. There were more ghosts of her past here, maybe chiming in their wailing with the winds', but they weren't the same as those in the Yuumura house. The ghosts here belonged to people. They belonged to the dead.

The wind had muffled the gunshots, but the grass hadn't been able to hide the bodies. Or what Kirika had done. She wondered what had happened to the three corpses, each with a single slug buried in their chest that had robbed them of breath evermore. Was the clearing an old Kawasaki crime scene, the case of three mysterious murders in suburbia unsolved? Or had Soldats come to collect their dead after the fact and erased all trace of their passing? Did bullet casings mingle amid the lush blades of grass, or had each been meticulously found and removed with the carcasses? Soldats were known to clean up after themselves, and only they were privy to the truth of the aftermath.

It was strange to mourn for three Soldats lives-any three lives-when Kirika had taken so many and felt nothing before. However, Kirika felt remorse seed her heart. Yes, they had been the first for her. In self-defence, but killing was killing. Yet….

Kirika's dismal expression sank further into bleakness as her heart suddenly did. The nostalgia lingered still, but it wasn't that or the regret that had strengthened to drag her down. It was because she wasn't mourning the lives. She was mourning the loss of her own, the loss of her ignorance that had been her innocence. Not the lives she had ended in simple seconds, no. If her hands were not jet-black back then, they definitely were now. Along with her heart.

[Sinner….]

She was right.

"Remote enough, or so it would seem for eyes outside," Mireille said, looking around the cordoned off clearing, her voice dashing aside the silken whisper in Kirika's mind like a flimsy cobweb and grounding the girl back in reality, turning her outside of her head as one would fold a jumper inside out. Mireille's hand went inside her flapping coat and out came her gun, then her other hand did the same at the opposite breast and the weapon's silencer was retrieved. She glanced sidelong at Kirika. If the woman sensed Kirika's gloomy mood, she pretended she didn't with that dispassion in her profile. Or maybe Mireille misguidedly alleged Kirika's mood was rooted wholly from her slip on the slope still and didn't want to bring it up again to fester her partner's disconcertion. In any case, Kirika's black heart wasn't something she would ever contemplate revealing to Mireille. Like her silent internal battle, there were some things the girl just couldn't let outside herself. For this one, she wondered if it was shame holding her back.

"We're still in the neighbourhood, however," Mireille continued, her attention on her tools now as she screwed the silencer on the Walther P99's barrel's thread. She lifted the gun up near her head when she was ready, and looked at Kirika again. "No point in taking the risk," she said.

"Mm…" Kirika droned distractedly. The silencers did affect a firearm's accuracy and range, which was why she and Mireille hardly ever carried out their target practice with the sound suppressers fitted. But for a sharpshooter like Mireille it mattered little unless she was exchanging fire at extreme distances beyond the specified scope of any pistol, and at those extents accuracy already would be grossly hindered by gravity's pull.

A silencer had never bothered Kirika's aim either. In some respects she liked it better, the crack of her sin subdued to a soft sullying, death in a whisper. As though it lessened the act's severity somehow, in the quiet. It didn't really, but it was a sinner's fantasy. Kirika fastened her silencer to her Beretta.

"There's not much in the way of targets," Mireille said, walking deeper into the clearing while peering about the bamboo some more. She stopped and her arm with her gun swung up smoothly, yet rigid by the end, and she snapped a practically noiseless shot off. An upright branch on the far side of the blonde rocked back violently, suddenly sporting an unnatural round divot where flawless bamboo had been. It swayed back and forth, faster than its mates did, the wind nothing to do with the vigour of its movement. Mireille turned back, smirking with confidence. "But we'll make do." The branch couldn't have been more than a couple of inches wide, if that.

Kirika was happy that Mireille decided the spot suitable. Not as happy as she had been in the living room tending to her partner's lacquered nails, though. Kirika had been useful again, but it was now the sort of useful she disliked.

Kirika walked to Mireille's flank, raising her pistol. She fired before she had reached the woman, hammering a second bullet nail into the bamboo and digging a deeper divot, sending the branch waving once more. The bamboo shaft above the hollow started to sag askew, splintering from the bottom. These targets couldn't withstand many rounds. Like flesh and blood people.

Every bamboo branch became a target, an untold number of people encircling Kirika and Mireille. They shot at will, emptying magazines and maiming branches without mercy or mistake. A little more of the illusion, of normality, slipped away in the hail of muted fire, in the drizzle of ejected casings that silently tumbled to join whatever old 9mm and other calibre shells lay forgotten in the grass, if any. Kirika considered that normality, and its position in her life. She realised that for her, this was more normal than anything else.

* * *

Dominique walked through the halls of Ishinomori Tower, the chrome-panelled stretches still and quiet in this late evening hour; the night in essence, an hour to be in your bed. An hour for other people to be, not her. Her business attire of the day was still her garb, it now feeling constricting and wrinkled and unclean after the too many hours of wear. The micromanagement of an empire seemed to be an everlasting job. However, it was not paperwork that saw her awake this night.

Beyond the broad plexiglass windows that swept by Dominique's left shoulder the lights of Yokohama glittered like gems on black velvet, a scattering of all kinds and shapes and sizes. Every jewel below down to the smallest twinkle belonged to Dominique's enclave and the Ishinomori clan. Paid for in blood and lives, but paid in full. Vengeance had been bought in Yokohama. Be that as it may, it was a single city with millions still owed.

As peaceful as the corridors were, they were not empty. Still, yes, but Dominique never found herself alone in any of them for long. With the exactitude in which the appointed guards for tonight's shift stood, forever at attention in their black apparel, the halls may have well been deemed empty. Only those sisters with a background in combat and experience to ripen it pulled this duty; there were not so few true Soldats adherents that every sister, even the more academically inclined and those learned merely in the theories of war, were called in as a garrison, or to take part in the actual fighting for that matter. The chosen women took their task seriously, evident by their vigilant eyes and alert posture, and in the face of the sense of security afforded behind thick walls and sometimes at the lofty heights of dozens of storeys.

The sentries' scanning eyes slowed on Dominique no more than a moment before moving on to windows and intersections and doorways. They knew her, of course. Some favoured her with nods or even smiles, which she returned in kind, if perhaps a lesser nod or smaller smile. Dominique belonged to their sisterhood, once an equal among them under Altena, but she had to be their leader now, and in that role slightly apart from them. Above them. People needed leaders and the order they instilled. Especially in times like these.

Kaede's apartments were Dominique's destination. Two guards flanking the doors were there to see her arrival, the women's presence and faces familiar, as was hers to them, Dominique surmised. She visited Kaede often enough for every sister assigned to protect the child to be accustomed to her appearance.

"She's awake," Violeta said in her sultry Romanian accent once Dominique was within a few paces of the doors, her head, covered in a cap of dark curls, inclining a little toward them. Nicola meanwhile had already dismissed Dominique and resumed her watch of the surrounds. Violeta didn't spend a second longer to do the same. Dominique had known neither before the collapse of Le Grand Retour, but every sister here was bonded all the stronger to one another now, and, she hoped, trusted each other unreservedly with their lives. It had been rumoured that Nicola had been at the Manor during the end, but Dominique wrote it off as a fable. Nicola looked hardy with her very short cropped bleached blonde hair, gaunt features, and wiry frame, but no one who had been on that sacred ground then had survived Noir's unleashing. The orphan and the noble… never before in centuries past had the Black Hands turned their blades on their keepers if the records were true. Why they had in this century, with the iron-willed Altena as their Kind Mother no less, was knowledge no sister possessed. Even the resident rumour mill couldn't fathom a reason for their rampage, or had lent enough weight to one for it to circulate.

Dominique didn't knock, however she did slip inside Kaede's quarters with nary a murmur. Kaede had retired for the evening, yet Dominique wasn't expecting her to be asleep. But the night was a time for quiet, and Kaede was seldom without bedroom companionship. Those 'companions' weren't afflicted as she. Few were.

The harsh fluorescent lighting of the halls reached inside the moonlit twilight despite Dominique's unobtrusive entry, but the woman quickly and silently shut it outside with the doors, leaving only the meagre yet bright seepage through the crack at the floor. It took a second of staring into the gloom for Dominique's eyes to become attuned to it over the vivid light from earlier and for the painfully recognisable room to take sharper shape. It stung every time Dominique crossed its threshold and dared to lift her head to the reality, the wound dulled with age but still there to hurt. And considering the great number of occasions she did step inside, it was almost masochistic of her. The apartments were another inheritance of Kaede's, lived in by her mother when she was still a part of this world. It was an intimate inheritance, more personal; perhaps the most personal apart from blood itself; and telling of the woman who it had belonged to. The same pastel lounge furniture, peaches and creams, the same abstract paintings and alien sculptures and statues. Kaede had not cared enough to change anything, or maybe it was the hurt in her heart of the same sort as Dominique's that had seen time frozen. She had to have memories of the time spent with her mother here, just as Dominique had of what had been her lover.

Romantic days and passionate nights… Hikaru in the golden sunrise, in the pale moonlight…. if there was ever an angel belonging in Heaven, it had been her. Dominique wished she hadn't been called home so soon.

Dominique shut her eyes, dismayed at losing her grip over her pain. Time had not dulled it; it was she who had smothered it thus. She didn't know what it was like for Kaede, but for her each memory of Hikaru was a barb to her heart. And each memory took every opportunity to resurface if not pushed down with cold deliberation. Indulge in one, and the rest would flood you. The happy times were gone, as dead as the woman who had made them so. There was just the pain, and that… and *that* Dominique let loose upon Soldats. Each barb to her heart was one to tear free and hurl at her hated foe.

This night it was Kaede bathed in the light of the moon, every bit as beautiful as her mother. She stood in front of a bare window where most of the moonlight could fall on her, her white locks shimmering a ghostly hue and her ashen complexion luminescent. If not for the shorter hair she could have been her. For a moment Dominique almost pandered to the ache. How she dreamed she could.

For Kaede a bed was seldom used for sleep. A troubled mind and a troubled spirit bred incurable insomnia, something Dominique suffered in mercifully a lesser degree. But Dominique had her share of restless nights wrought with fitful nightmares. She still did.

Dominique had suggested sleeping tablets, a resort she herself sometimes yielded to, but Kaede refused to 'defile' her body with drugs, irrespective of how beneficial they were. Odd, maybe, when the child manufactured thousands of them and sold more of all types, the bulk not so beneficial. Although, a brewer of poisons rarely ingested their own concoctions now, didn't they? Bar the sleeping aids, it wasn't as though Dominique snorted cocaine with her coffee.

A robe was arranged carelessly around Kaede's toned body, its silvery-grey silk adopting a shadowed sheen against her skin. It gaped open, its tie dangling heedlessly above the carpet, and baring entirely too much for the casual observer. Yes, these were her apartments, but really! The respect Kaede had for her body's insides didn't incorporate its outsides. Dominique had attempted to teach the child a sense of propriety, but Kaede was too much of a cavalier soul for it to stick… or for her to make any sort of decent effort to help it so. Or perhaps her mind was too focused on more important things to worry about proper decorum. Dominique supposed she should be grateful Kaede wasn't completely naked. Yet when merely your arms, back, and some of your legs were concealed, naked might already be an accurate description.

Kaede's… pets… didn't have the same ambiguity. They had the cover of naught but their skin, not so much as a stocking on a leg. The hills and valleys of the dishevelled sheets they loafed among hid little, doing more to accentuate their state of undress with the insinuation the messy bed supplied. Evidence enough of what Kaede really used a bed for. Maybe she found salvation in Claire and Fumiko's arms, peace; an escape from her turmoil in the hazy pleasures their bodies could bestow. But like the sleeping pills Dominique prescribed, it was a short-lived oblivion. They both had their methods, neither of which the other approved of. Kaede's choice was not for Dominique. Only one distinct woman could ever share her bed. Only one.

Across the room and through the open bedroom door Claire sprawled, awake and staring in the dark. On her stomach, her back arched and body sinuous, she was like a coiled serpent rearing its head, her ringlets a gorgon's wig. Stunning, sensuality in red, she oozed seduction all the way to Dominique. Dominique regarded her evenly. No heady lust raged; no desire was kindled. Claire was simply a woman in the nude; something Dominique saw every morning she dressed and every night she undressed. Fumiko, huddled into a semblance of a ball on the other side of the bed with her bare back to Claire and just as naked, was observed with equal apathy. Only one.

Claire's impish face held no warmth or smiles for Dominique, and these days Kaede herself, whom the sister owed it to, didn't see either as often as she should. Like a snake indeed Claire was becoming, shedding her silken skin for an abrasive hide. Dominique should have anticipated it. Of course Claire would come to resent her, and Kaede too even, her duty personified. Being ordered to become a whore would embitter most. Dominique supposed it was for the good that Claire had her anger. As long as she didn't crumble like Fumiko. Anything but that.

Besides, Dominique wasn't really whoring Claire out to Kaede. It was more in the vein of matchmaking. For her faults, Claire was a fine sister and woman with the strength of spirit to manage Kaede. And yet… yet, it had pained Dominique to give the order. Even now, irrational jealousy spiked that she tried very hard not to analyse. She was frustrated that Kaede seemed to view Claire as merely a concubine, but she was rather happy as well. Dominique was aware more must form between the two young women; she planned it, needed it… but she did not wish it.

Claire turned up her cute nose at Dominique, the older woman imagining the sniff the younger gave, and then gradually settled her head on her forearms and closed her eyes, more a match with a hound in slumber now. Dominique preferred the hound to the serpent. Hounds still had a bite, but they were loyal, and lacked the venom. What Claire must become.

"Children should be sleeping…" Dominique said quietly in the tone set by the late hour. Kaede's nakedness wandered into her gaze to taunt it with immodesty as she turned her head, but she didn't think of averting her eyes. It was too common an exhibition, such that she didn't so much as remember her decision to enter without a knock, nor would she rethink it even if she could. The indecency had matured to become as normal as decent was.

"I'm far from a child," Kaede replied with unexpected clarity. She was more centred than usual tonight. And in her lucidness she was right. That athletic and well-rounded body was not of a child's. In baring all Kaede had nothing to be ashamed of. There was immodesty, yes, but never obscenity. She was more exquisite than any work of art in the room, nay, the building. Kaede had been sculpted with the same angel who had birthed her in mind.

"Yes…" Dominique said, walking over to stand behind her precious charge. "In some respects," she conditionally conceded with a light-hearted smile for the child's faint reflection in the window. She placed a hand on Kaede's shoulder, sleek with the thin silk. The unconscious desire to stroke that hand over the smoothness and down Kaede's arm itched her palm. Dominique squeezed gently to rein the urge in, and then recalled why she was here… after some effort.

Dominique had come to check on Kaede. Kaede's trial for drug related charges was tomorrow-today, if time wore on a little further-and the young woman would be leaving the tower to be present. It was meaningless to attend, really. The indictment shouldn't have proceeded beyond a hearing. The whistleblower had been silenced and the foundation of the prosecution's case had been demolished as a consequence. Kaede would be in and out of that courtroom in a matter of minutes, vindicated in the eyes of the law if not in the media's and public's. Suspicions would linger for a time, naturally, but Ishinomori Pharmaceutical's share price would recoup, Dominique predicted with certainty.

It wasn't the open and shut case that had Dominique fretting. It would be the first occasion Kaede had been outside in… in longer than Dominique could recollect. There was safety in Ishinomori Tower, but in the streets….

Dominique gripped Kaede's shoulder harder and swallowed the slight lump swelling in her throat as though it were the awful memories gathering. It was probably more for her own benefit that she had sought out Kaede. Kaede's motorcade would have the best defences and an escort of the most capable sisters willing to lay down their lives for her. Moreover, Dominique would be there. She would *ensure* history didn't stray into the present. If the worst happened, it would be different this time. Dominique would do what she should have done those years ago.

Dominique blinked in surprise when she felt Kaede's hand atop hers, and was surprised again when tears had to be blinked back. She cursed herself for the thaw in her icy shield and took a deep, and to her disgrace, shuddering breath to help rebuild it. No one could see how profoundly she hurt, but above all Kaede could not see. Dominique must not compound the girl's anguish with the showing of her own. Dominique had to be the ice to her fire. She had to be strong in her own way.

"Do you think they are watching?"

Dominique knew Kaede meant both her parents, a dishonour she didn't rectify. The day would come when the truth was told, but not before the child was ready to hear it. "I know she is," Dominique whispered, closing her eyes. Watching, and waiting. Dominique prayed her soul was still clean enough for Heaven. Knowing Hikaru, she would drag Dominique up there no matter how dirty it was. The thought helped to settle her. They'd be together again.

"Blood and fire… we'll cleanse their sin in blood and fire," Kaede said, nearing a sneer at the end. What hold she had on her mind was slipping, it fracturing again. "Even on high, they will see the flames and hear their screams."

Dominique didn't reply to the madness or voice her worries-she had never intended to-but she allowed herself to lean forwards, pressing against Kaede's strong back. She smelt the same… the light scent of the prettiest flowers. She wielded a sword and waged a war, but there was still one angel left on earth.

* * *

Kirika reclined on the bed; her arms dead at her sides while her eyes were glass reflecting the ceiling that was slowly becoming charted with each night's survey. She looked a vacant shell save for the rise and fall of her chest. But contained within was ample thought and feeling, life aplenty to greatly contradict the dearth outside.

Mireille's plans were still fresh in Kirika's mind, the blonde's and those of Yokohama District Court that the woman had unfurled from somewhere. Information provided by that nervous Soldats man, probably. Kirika didn't mull over those background details too much. If Mireille had judged the blueprints worth their inspection and memorisation, then they were. Kirika had committed every room and hallway and stairwell to a pocket of her memory, ready to be pulled out and unfurled within her mind when they were needed. There were other plans of other buildings in that pocket, their lines blurred with age whilst others missed huge chunks of sections, and others still were just a shadowed outline of a perimeter. Nevertheless, they were still there. There could come a day when they were required again, and it would only take one reminder for the hazy rooms to become solid and the corridors to lead to all the right locations. It was not that Kirika actively strived to remember the places she had been. Truly, there were many she wished she could forget together with what bloody events had transpired at each. Despite that longing, she simply couldn't forget them. It could be that it was unconscious on her part, with every memory that was hers grasped onto and never let go, as though they could compensate for the gaps in the jigsaw puzzle that was her past life.

Kirika's gun was wedged between the bed's frame and the mattress at head height, secreted and close… and clean and oiled and loaded, primed for the blood-red dawn. It was ready-it was always ready. And Kirika… she was always ready too. The sand had almost run out, the final sun fallen beneath the horizon, and she grieved… but she was prepared for the darkness. Sin was abhorrent… the thought of it, anyway. Once it was upon her, she reacted like a sinner should. Kirika didn't enjoy it, but it would happen. She thought of the dawn further ahead, the one that spelled the last of the dark day. Peace would come again.

The whisper in her head rustled like browned leaves about to fall, but she thought harder of the sunrise until it went quiet. Home was through that light. Kirika would have to fight to it, kill for it. She would do what she had to. She would do what she was best at. And then she would abandon the courthouse to her memory, hoping to forget the lives she had traded for her own inner contentment… and how insignificant it had felt when she had taken them. She never would, of course. Guilt over not feeling guilty… did that make her still human some? Or was it the weeping of a demon, plaintive of what she was? The whisper had answers for Kirika, but she couldn't trust it. Would Mireille know? Would an angel understand her plights?

The angel chose then to make her entrance into the bedroom; sans wings for her own sins she bore. Mireille was in her pyjamas like Kirika; her baggy nightshirt; set for bed. It was the weapon in her hand that said she was set for more.

Mireille slid the clip from the Walther P99, checked it, and then reloaded it. Kirika's gaze sharpened. Mireille was still beautiful standing in the doorway, even armed so. Kirika didn't know if it was the prolonged staring or from emotion that her eyes began to tear. Maybe it was a melange of both, each feeding on the other in a loop of adoration. From head to foot the woman was transcendent, Kirika's better half, the light in her life. Sin had brought Kirika to Mireille; they were joined by it. Somehow, sin had wrought a love unbreakable. How something of that grandeur could grow from shadow and death was unimaginable. Kirika wondered if it had been the same for every Noir before them. However, it felt like nothing in history could ever compare to this union, this passion-this love. Or ever would.

Mireille switched off the stand lamp, plunging the room into a twilight that the orangey-yellow glow of a streetlight strained valiantly to dispel. Valiantly, but it was a vain aspiration wrung through the fibres of the closed curtains. Nonetheless, Kirika was appreciative of its attempt. It wasn't the dark of the room she was cagey of; the generic gloom was nothing, harmless, to that which polluted the world, veiled her mind, and was a stain on her soul; but it couldn't hurt to repel it too.

Mireille rounded the foot of the bed to her side of it, bringing her gun with her. She bent down to cram the pistol inside the makeshift holster of bed frame and mattress as Kirika had done on the opposite side, and then turned down the sheets and slipped beneath them. Kirika lifted her knees to her chest and rocked backwards, and with her hands she lowered her half of the covers out from under her bottom and then pulled them up over her legs as she straightened the sinewy limbs toward the end of the bed. Snug within the blanket cocoon, Kirika and Mireille lay side by side on their backs in silence, wide-awake and blinking at the morphing shadows on the ceiling inked by the filtered streetlamp illumination and sketched on the whimsy of the wind through tree leaves outside the window.

"Let's have tea when we get back home," Mireille announced out of the blue into the darkness.

Surprised, Kirika turned her head on her pillow to Mireille, and was greeted by the woman's bright smiling face already turned her way and waiting for her. "Orange Peko," Mireille said through her fond expression. Orange Peko was the first tea Kirika had learned to brew, and to her disappointment was pretty much still the only tea today she could make that was appetising to Mireille's fine standards. Fortunately the flavour seemed to be one of Mireille favourites. Kirika supposed it was her own favourite, too.

Kirika returned the smile, although it was small and shy in comparison. She felt the nip of swelling teardrops perched on her eyelids again. It could be that Mireille was just trying to cheer her up with thoughts of the pleasantries that awaited them back in Paris, but Kirika believed she wasn't by herself in her desire for home. Mireille was more than a physical presence of splendour and support; she was with Kirika in every respect and for every step. Home was sanctuary for them *both*, and they were both in the struggle to earn safe passage back to it. Mireille often appeared a pinnacle of leadership, gallant and dependable, unflappable, on top of every problem and situation of life's making. She was a cold assassin and an astute woman, the strategist and the caretaker. Kirika didn't think Mireille ever possessed the same sort of worries that weighed on her heart and mind. Mireille was on another plane entirely, unfettered by such uncertainty and woe. Or so was Kirika's regular impression. She forgot sometimes that Mireille, although more angelic than human, yet had feelings. There were some sentiments that flowed between them despite the boundaries of wisdom and maturity. Love, being the most notable and brilliant of all.

Mireille lifted her right arm across her body to Kirika while the other moved above the girl's head; a potential embrace open and inviting, cosy and idyllic and always sought after. Seeing Kirika bat her eyes a couple of times in perplexity, the blonde arched a wry eyebrow. "You'll wind up here anyway," Mireille explained dryly, though mitigated by a smirk that was anything but. "Why bother waiting." She looked away nonchalantly, as if it were nothing, however Kirika could tell her partner's focus was still glued firmly on her.

Kirika's chin neared her chest as she dropped her head, feeling chagrin for her little habit. But not so much that it overshadowed the memory of the delight she got from it, snuggled against her beloved Mireille. And to have it completely sanctioned this time! Held against Mireille by the woman's own accepting arms….

Kirika swallowed, but she hesitated no longer in scooting across the bed and eliminating the space between herself and Mireille. Mireille's arms settled around her once she was pressed to the blonde's perfect form. It was Heaven's embrace.

Mireille's hand covered Kirika's smaller own where it was just below the woman's gently rising and falling chest. Kirika could feel the body next to her own relax, and she knew Mireille had closed her eyes. Kirika released contentment in a breath, and then allowed her eyelids to droop and then close too. The final grains of peace passing through the hourglass.

['If you want peace, you must prepare for war'.]

It rang like a tenet in Kirika's head even though it began as Altena's whispered voice, invoking a resonance of a faraway thought. A thought she couldn't grasp, only see the image of behind a pane of glass. It was shaped like a missing jigsaw piece.

No matter whose memory it belonged to or who had said it, there was a grudging truth in it. Kirika slept satisfied and serene in Mireille's arms, but when the dawn of war arose next morning, she was awake to see it.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

And that's that! It's time to move on to more action at last! _


	21. Dark Crossing

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twenty-first chapter. At last! Action! Plot! _

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 21 - Dark Crossing

"You'll crease your suit lying like that."

Mireille's chiding tugged Kirika's head to roll toward the bedroom's door, herald for the towel-wrapped woman's appearance. Mireille had declared that Kirika shower before her to allow her the opportunity to unearth suitable clothing for the imminent 'assignment' from the wardrobes their baggage supplied. The outcome had been the squeaky clean younger girl welcomed back from her morning wash by her slate-grey business suit and a white shirt with a red decorative cord for the collar arranged for her on the bed, and the blonde responsible for the service only now finishing her own lavations.

Remaining inert, Kirika's eyes; exempt from her body's indolence; moved with Mireille as the blonde strode to the chest of drawers standing against the wall to the left of the bed; and to the left of Kirika sprawled upon it; arms outstretched and her legs apart as wide as her skirt permitted. The bed wasn't made, a match for the girl's untidy lassitude, although the covers had been sloppily pulled to the pillows in a disheveled show of order. Idly Kirika mused whether she had creases in her clothing the same as the messy bed sheets, as per her partner's warning. She didn't think it would matter much to her cover if she did, but Mireille acclaimed a neat presentation of one's self, so for that sake she hoped to have escaped a rumpling. Mireille would usually see to it herself to straighten Kirika up if not. The close, personal attention wasn't something to really deserve shunning however, and the girl supposed it was for that particular reason that she was in no hurry to observe Mireille's direction… for now.

Mireille grappled at the towel wrapping around her as it apparently threatened to slip and unravel, and stripped off the hood made from a second towel she wore over her head with a yank from her other hand, wet flaxen hair spilling loose in a tangled affair. Her back was to Kirika, but it was still hard to look away. There was appreciation to discover in all aspects of Mireille's figure, and from every angle. Perhaps prolonging her comfortable view of her sculptured beloved was one more motivation to linger in lethargy.

Kirika sat up to the blare of the hairdryer going, choosing the edge of the bed furthest from Mireille to swing her legs over before her feet touched the floor. There was a threshold for how long she could shirk an instruction from Mireille. She didn't want to get a stricter scolding after all. Moreover, there was an instinct, an inherent need, to obey her blonde partner encoded within Kirika. The longer she disregarded supervision given by Mireille, the greater the urgency to fulfill it she felt. As the rebellious seconds ticked, each was synonymous to a step toward navigating deeper into a thickening minefield. Kirika became progressively restless, on edge; her thoughts grew to focus on nothing else but her lapse, and physical irritation manifested though missing a tangible source; her skin itching in, conveniently, awkward to reach spots, and aches that weren't there before suddenly were. Whatever activity she was doing or repose she was in was cursed, sucked of appeal and comfort.

Yet for all the penalties of defiance, seldom did Kirika suffer them. Kirika was punctual to mind Mireille's word because she wanted to. Whether there was distinction between the innate impulse to do as she was told and the desire in her heart to, she couldn't deduce it. It wasn't relevant. Their goals were the same, and pleasing Mireille was the end result.

Heedless of locating and smoothing away any wrinkles in her outfit she might have, Kirika's head crept over her shoulder, choosing the ecstasy of drinking in her love's splendor once more, her eyes addicted to it and her heart to the woman inside who modeled it. Mireille's stream of blonde locks were the main attraction as their alluring owner methodically ran her wooden hairbrush down their length under the heat of the hairdryer, spun gold coming to luster as the damp was gradually coaxed out. It was always that brush of rosy wood with the faded gold detail around the rim of the back face; wherever in the world Kirika and Mireille went, it traveled in their company.

Kirika had wondered before if the hairbrush carried personal importance for her partner; some keepsake of her home in Corsica, maybe? It looked as if it had a history with its dulled decorative pattern; the colour likely as bright as Mireille's tresses at that history's beginning. It might have belonged to her mother. If it had, it was to some extent Kirika's keepsake too. A memento of the person who had blessed her with the seed that would bear a greater existence than the hateful one originally intended for her, even while Kirika had been at the point of extinguishing hers. Kirika could never forget her or the kindness she had shown in the face of her death, to its harbinger no less. Kirika could see her in Mireille-in heart and spirit, and even in looks. Odette Bouquet lived on in her daughter.

Mireille dedicated a prolific amount of time in the morning and even more so at night to combing her hair with her favoured brush; stroke after stroke, over and over that Kirika gave up keeping a tally of how often it parted and caressed those silken strands. Like magic the hairbrush brought out the best in Mireille's hair; somehow polishing the mane to a glossy sheen and inspiring a buoyant bounce to the way it fell and moved. Kirika ached to brush her beloved's hair to that brilliance. To spend the hours peacefully watching up close as her brushstrokes glided down the blonde cascade, being near enough to pick up its scent, near enough to let her fingers flow through the locks whenever she craved the divine sensation of softer than silk. If only Kirika had the daring to ask and the confidence she could brush Mireille's hair in the proper fashion. If only. In the deficiency, Kirika had to be content at admiring the perfect beauty with a distance forever a buffer. Perhaps radiance as Mireille possessed wasn't meant to be touched but merely treasured with the eyes… and longed for in the heart.

She could have sat staring all morning-she could have sat for as long as Mireille was there to behold-but eventually Kirika stood up from the bed, running her hands over her skirt to flatten it out this time around, just to be safe. A straightening tug on the bottom of her jacket later and she was wandering toward the bedroom's sole window, knowing the sights it had on offer behind the shut drapes. It was a school day, after all.

With the forethought of the vigilant, Kirika eased open a break in the curtains, employing a single finger; the gap a nigh on incidental crinkle in the fabric to those on the outside of the glass windowpane, but a peephole for the orchestrating girl on the inside. The sun however, never the fool like those it shined on below, leapt on the opportunity to cast a bright limb into the room, yet Kirika had foreseen and sidestepped even its reach. It was a risk gazing out the window; any antagonist could be gazing back, and the unnecessary security breach would vex Mireille if too gaudy or possibly even out of sheer principle; but Kirika had tweaked the odds of the gamble radically in her favour. The assassin was no more exposed to a sniper scope or camera lens than she was to an onlooker's eye. A critiquing azure look at her back was the greater peril on her mind, however Kirika trusted her canny approach would prove to mitigate that.

The window was host to the street in front of the Yuumura house below, a slice of suburban living spread out with skyscrapers of the city distant, behind the trees and power lines and neighbours' houses. It was a threshold to what might have been; to the other world.

A gaggle of giggling high school girls roamed the pavement outside the house, tracing a path Kirika used to follow and still remembered. The uniforms were the same, although the weather saw coats worn over the blue winter version of them. Tsubaki High School went on without her. Kirika wondered what had become of her classmates. She recognised none in the group below. Were the girls and boys of class 2-4 still there? Did they speculate on where she had suddenly gone? Did they remember her sometimes? Or had it been as though Kirika had never been a part of their class, their school, and her disappearance was akin to an eraser removing a mistake-dismissed without a vestige remaining to mark her existence? It was in the realm of Soldats to have lubricated her departure once Japan had seen Kirika and Mireille's backs; paperwork vanishing and faculty coerced into forgetting about one quiet, unassuming girl. It wasn't as though Kirika had formed friendships in Tsubaki High School or left an impact on any of her teachers. Even in the world of light she had tread in darkness; she had been of the friendless, a shadow while everyone around her had been bright. The stigma of a killer, a sinner, was not something shed with a simple loss of memory. Kirika had never been one of them.

The girls down there… glass separated them, but they and Kirika were a world apart. Their world was not Kirika's, just as Kirika's world was alien to them. Their naivety to it made them safe; kept them smiling. Kept them in the light. It was better for them to not know her. Like Heaven and Hell were separated, a demon was out of place in paradise. Kirika would always see their world through a window; she'd never truly live in it. Still, she hoped that one day she might find a place of sorts in it, but Kirika's eyes had seen too much death and her hands been wet with too much blood. The light would never wash the shadow from her, not completely.

The hairdryer switched off, and Kirika let the schoolgirls blur as she focused her gaze on Mireille's reflection on her side of the glass, the blonde's image overlapping the group. In the choice between light and dark, Kirika would always stand where it was blackest for as long as Mireille chose the dark-beside the woman she loved. That was her purpose this morning and the next, and for every one thereafter while they lingered in their sinister world. The girls walking to school could not allege to have an equal or more important function, and in that sense Kirika had something over them and their peaceful existence. Something beautiful flourished in the deep blackness, like a flower blooming in a land otherwise constantly ravaged by war. It was that lone flower Kirika held in her heart for succour and what caused a euphoric swelling there in her breast. She fought in support of Mireille, to ensure the darkness didn't claim the breathtaking woman's life-that nothing would. It was an honour made in love and upheld with love, and even if they did manage simpler, quieter lives together one day, that honour would persist. Mireille and the amazing feelings they shared was Kirika's pinprick of light in the vast dark, but it was vibrant and clear, and couldn't be encroached by the void around it.

[Sinners always try to justify their crimes; do you think you are any different? Sin is sin; the grey world doesn't exist. Nothing glorifies it.]

Kirika watched Mireille in the window as the blonde walked over to their luggage, the girl's brow creasing slightly as she tried hard to concentrate on her adored partner alone. The voice in her head belonged to Altena, but it didn't speak like her. Kirika was starting to doubt if her other self had been the prodigy that she had always thought her to be; the perfect student of Altena and her enclave, robotic in following their creed. Altena had relished in submerging herself in sin; she of anybody found grandeur in it. Then again, the voice was not to be trusted. She worked to undermine Kirika, stoking her fears while gnawing at her spirit. To what end, Kirika did not like thinking about.

Mireille bent over to dig around in her bag, and Kirika discovered her eyes alighting on her partner's upraised bottom. It turned out to be as engrossing as every other occasion her gaze loitered on it, clearing her mind of her perturbing thoughts-all thought, really. Her mind, ordinarily an indiscriminate sea of churning waves and drifting streams went quite silent and still; what always happened during the moments she was particularly mired in gazing deeply and fondly at Mireille. The towel covered most of the blonde's posterior-it was rare to catch it exposed, and then only flashes-but in the dim outline the window-turned-mirror provided, Kirika thought she could *just* see up inside it. If only the angle were better….

It became an unnatural obsession-Kirika subtly tilting her head this way and that to see whether the new perspectives created would let her view more of the cheeks of her love's rear. Mireille's bottom sashaying a little from side to side while she rummaged only heightened Kirika's level of heady enthrallment. It always moved, swayed, so… so…. Kirika didn't have a word for how it moved, but it was nice to watch. From far, far away a tiny thought mused on why naked bottoms weren't shown on television. Or for that matter, naked women like Mireille. That might be a program Kirika would enjoy and make an effort to see. The girl guessed it was due to propriety again; there were some places on the human body that were just hidden as a rule. Kirika would cover herself too while dressing sometimes, when she remembered. But again, it was merely because it was something she believed she was meant to do. At least when she forgot to Mireille didn't admonish her for it, probably because Kirika was either in the privacy of their bedroom or secluded behind a curtain in a store's changing room.

Mireille stood up straight, Kirika's toil to see what she wasn't meant to for naught, and the girl's mental faculties returned to her, though how she was feeling disappointed was the first thought shaped. Kirika didn't budge from her position however, still hopeful for more. There had never been an assignment so dangerous that could match these feelings-the sensation of spicy anxiousness, the flavour of genuine fear nearly, but fear she *wanted* to face and that tamed her breathing to a slow and measured tempo. When her gun was in her grasp Kirika was never afraid or eager for the possible exchange of fire ahead. She felt nothing. This was something else. She tingled with life inside.

From Mireille's likeness in the window Kirika could pick out a lacy pair of black panties and matching bra in the blonde's hand, delicate things unlike the underwear the younger girl had. Mireille's undergarments came in an array of colours and styles, and in fabrics like satin and silk and lace. Kirika's were so very plain by comparison-cotton mostly cut in straightforward designs, and white and pink and blue the usual shades. She supposed her underwear served its purpose well enough, but Mireille's was pretty, especially once on the woman's body. Kirika had even glimpsed panties that left the blonde's bottom cheeks bare! It was strange to wear garments that looked so nice when no one got to see them under your clothing. There had to be a reason, but it was a mystery to Kirika.

Still, Kirika wouldn't have minded so much trying on attire like that, but Mireille didn't possess the same devotion she had choosing Kirika's undergarments as she did the rest of her partner's wardrobe. They were always selected in a hurry, with rarely much browsing involved. It continued to the instances when Mireille laid out her clothes for her; the woman let Kirika decide on her own what to don underneath it. This morning had been no exception; Kirika's suit had been missing a set of underwear. The girl didn't know why. True, it wasn't often she thought she needed to wear a bra. She simply put on the clothes she had and it didn't seem to make a difference lacking one. Mireille always wore one, or something like it, however she was a lot bigger up there. Maybe Kirika's size was why Mireille didn't bother spending the time.

Mireille paused suddenly and glanced over her shoulder, and for a second Kirika thought she was going to get in trouble for peeking out the window, or worse, caught peeking at her. Mireille didn't like it when Kirika watched her change. Kirika was shooed away rather brusquely when she had first sat there staring after moving in with the blonde, teaching her not to look so obviously again. Kirika had undressed and dressed in the company of her classmates for gym without generating an acrid reaction, but perhaps there were different standards in school.

Apparently Kirika's spying on both counts was overlooked or unnoticed for now, as Mireille was content to look away and put on her panties. She slipped them on underneath her towel however; the veiled approach her normal habit while Kirika was around. But after a wiggle of her hips to get comfortable in her black underwear, the towel fell from Mireille to encircle her feet, and Kirika was treated to her partner's bare back. The dimple of perfect alabaster skin down the center that followed that sinuous curve, ending at the woman's albeit panty-clad round bottom, only for two long, slender, beautifully toned legs to carry on the rest of the way downwards…. Kirika's eyes didn't want to leave. It was as close to seeing all of Mireille without the blanketing distraction of clothes that Kirika was ever privileged to. Mireille packaged herself attractively in elegant apparel, but regardless of how stylish the clothes were there was no fabric on par with the blonde's naked flesh-her true, unadorned self.

Mireille threaded her arms through the shoulder straps of her bra, and then after fiddling with it at the front, fastened the clasp at her back. She bent at the waist again to retrieve something out of her bag, but it was for the shortest of moments. However, as consolation, when she rose her stretched underwear was pushed a little bit between the two cheeks of her bottom, creating some delightful contours.

At last Mireille turned around-side-on to at least allow Kirika to properly revere her stature in lace underwear-and she walked over to sit on the edge of her half of the bed. She gathered together what looked like a tan knot of material in her hands and reached down to her feet. When the blonde sat back up, sheer nylon was unrolled along her calves. Mireille got to her feet to pull the remainder of the elastic material past her thighs and over her hips, and then shimmied those hips to and fro as she adjusted the pantyhose to her liking, her thumbs stretching and twisting the waistband about. She grumbled wordlessly under her breath throughout-low mutterings, probably deliberately subdued so that Kirika wouldn't hear, however they failed to be amply muffled that the girl's receptive ears weren't piqued-and pulled a variety of discontent expressions before finally leaving the waistband alone. Tights weren't a favourite of Mireille's, but her penchant for very short skirts saw them as part of her garb all too frequently. On one of their numerous fashion-related forays, Mireille had sternly educated Kirika on the topic of pantyhose being a poor and distasteful substitute for thigh-high stockings and garter belt, or even just the stockings. She didn't remark why exactly, but her abhorrence was unmistakable.

Kirika had her theories she tossed around in her mind, of course. Pantyhose were plain-black, brown or white were the only hues Kirika had observed in her partner's wardrobe, and with no patterns or designs to speak of-whereas Mireille was fond of pretty things. Contrary, Mireille's stocking collection, while not having many extra colours, had lots and lots of diverse decoration. Kirika had seen stockings resembling netting; loose like a chain-link fence or tight akin to mesh; stockings with stitched butterflies, stockings with vertical stripes, stockings with horizontal stripes, stockings with checkers-then there was the lace band at the tops, and the garters too! The assortment was as great as their wearer's taste for them.

Perhaps pantyhose had a comparable selection, but Mireille simply didn't entertain it. Kirika wasn't as offended by tights as the blonde; she wore a tan pair like Mireille did now, although granted it was uncommon-hosiery didn't fall under the category of underwear according to the woman, and was typically set out for Kirika by her-but she had to agree that stockings were nicer. Kirika felt fine wearing pantyhose herself; the texture of nylon was rather pleasant to run her hands down; and they did accentuate Mireille's legs as superbly as thigh-high stockings did, but stockings; and especially when complemented with a garter belt; had an allure unmatched by their lengthier sister. That stockings didn't completely cover the whole leg, sparing a tantalising space of thigh above an eye-catching lace design, made them the winner in Kirika's opinion. She got to look at Mireille's legs attractively attired and yet still had some of her love's skin on open display-a sampling of both beauties. And while it was correct that Kirika couldn't catch sight of Mireille's panties once the blonde was fully dressed, she didn't like how pantyhose fit so high on her partner's hips. She felt it was a shame to obscure pretty underwear of the kind Mireille had during the times it was revealed.

Kirika hadn't had the experience of slipping on a set of thigh-high stockings of Mireille's sort, and never a garter belt. Hers were always basic like the blonde's tights, and cotton, and the lace was absent. Similar to her underwear in fact, which rendered Kirika musing on the secret of why Mireille didn't handle her hosiery the same as she ministered to her undergarments. She tried, but Kirika wasn't sure she'd ever understand fashion, or at least Mireille's interpretation of it.

Mireille made to walk back to her bags, however she stopped when she was faced with Kirika at the window, and as though seeing the girl there for the first time, struck a rigid, officious pose; her hips swung to one side and a hand found purchase on the raised swell. She frowned like that at Kirika's back for a second or two, her look predictably disapproving, but then resumed her course to the foot of the bed.

Once there, Mireille leaned over her luggage, hovering on one foot while the other lifted for balance behind her, and with her fingertips plucked a white shirt from one of her bags by its collar. "There must be something very interesting out there," she remarked as she shook out the shirt. The blonde must have felt she had enough clothes on now to tolerate Kirika's visual attention.

Even so, Kirika was sluggish in turning around and leaving the curtain, the acclimatised convention for when her partner was dressing keeping her chary while also that she had been spying making her unwilling to present herself as too keen to look. "Mmm… not so much," Kirika said, her finger slipping from the drape. The outside didn't beguile so much this occasion; for all its temptation it was the inside that sported the greater lure. Peace and wishes were for tomorrow; the gun and a promise were for today.

Mireille seemed grim when Kirika finally faced her head-on, the woman concentrating too fixatedly on finding the sleeves of her shirt for her arms. She tugged sharply on the shirt's lapels, the fabric answering with a crisp snap, and then began to button it from the top downward. "We'll be home soon," Mireille said after she had worked about halfway down the shirt, not looking up from her fastening fingers. She had spoken of the return home seldom, yet the hope was everlasting hanging in the air amidst Kirika and Mireille, and the times she had given them voice were notable enough for the declaration to have neared becoming a mantra, or perhaps a prayer; one shared by them both.

"Mm," Kirika nodded. She tried to draw comfort from Mireille's assurance whenever the woman gave it; to believe her; but each time it was uttered some of its promise eroded in the girl's heart and in her partner's voice. Today would see if Mireille's conviction was vindicated, or if the assuring veneer would be abraded to a false hope underneath.

Mireille finished doing up her shirt and procured a lavender skirt and jacket from her bag; a matching set. She tossed the jacket on the bed and then stepped into the skirt before pulling it up to her waist, wriggling her hips again-which Kirika took notice of, hopefully not too obviously-to ease it along. It was rather petite like Kirika had suspected, climbing high on her thighs well above her knees, and with a slit down the side of the left leg to expose more pantyhose. Although it would give more freedom of movement than Kirika's much longer grey skirt that was cut to just beyond her knees and had its slit in the back, the girl was positive that Mireille hadn't decided on it for its strategic good sense.

Mireille ensured that her shirt was tucked into her skirt smoothly by way of her hand feeling under the waistband's circumference, and then walked back to the chest of drawers. It wasn't just a place to style her hair; Mireille had set up a makeup station there on top of the drawers as well. She leaned close and stared into the little mirror she had propped up against some books, and reminiscent of an artist to a canvas, applied her special paints to her features. Her eyelashes were teased with brushes and her lips carefully coated with lipstick, powder was dabbed and then coloured pencils were used for the final touches. It looked complex and painstaking, but Mireille was packing away her cosmetics bag for another morning in no time.

Kirika hadn't tried painting her face, at least not for the titivating aim her partner did; camouflage mix for dense foliage and black smears for especially treacherous night assignments were her colours, and the application of both were empty of the delicate diligence the blonde demonstrated with her bevy of attractive shades. Mireille had yet to introduce the practice to her either, the absence of a teacher all but ending any exploration into the ritual before it could begin. Nonetheless, Kirika didn't feel as though she was less for not wearing makeup. She had stared into a mirror a few times, straining to imagine what her visage might look like with a glaze of cosmetics, but the face staring back at her didn't alter a notable extent. Kirika took that as her features being fine without makeup, however it would have been nice to try wearing it once. Imagination was no substitute for the real thing, and she could have been wrong about its effect.

Mireille didn't truly require makeup either actually, and yet following the woman's efforts Kirika was always happy she had pursued it. Mireille looked ravishing plain-faced, but the cosmetics she put on toiled to highlight that beauty, emphasising her rich blue eyes, long eyelashes, lush lips, and flawless complexion. The blonde's immaculate features were more… out there, for all to see. Kirika didn't think her love was more gorgeous with makeup, just that the reality was much more obvious, even to her.

Mireille grabbed a fancy-looking spray bottle partway filled with a golden liquid off the chest of drawers, and then arched her head back, accentuating her throat. She sent out several plumes of fine mist into the air in front of her, before stepping slightly into the rapidly vanishing wafting clouds. She did similar at her left wrist, squirting a puff of not exactly sweet, but a pleasantly heady fragrance above her pulse point. Mireille replaced the perfume after that, and straight away rubbed the insides of her wrists together to spread the aroma.

Kirika had consistently found this behaviour baffling. The girl was of the belief that it would be more effective for Mireille to spray the scent directly on her body. And why the blonde was so sparing as to wipe her wrists together to anoint the odour to her neglected pulse point was awkward to rationalise too. Was perfume expensive? For as long as Kirika had known her Mireille had never been stingy with money-being a freelance assassin was extremely profitable; there forever seemed to be someone who wanted someone else dead, and the skills sought for a precise and reliable execution never came cheap. Furthermore, that guess was in dispute with Mireille not electing the efficiency of spraying her perfume straight on her body. Was it toxic in large doses? That thought was scary, even if it did make Mireille smell very… peppery, pleasingly so. Her presence was rendered all the more imposing just by that bouquet. Be that as it may, its toxicity was in question. Sometimes when Kirika roamed the cosmetics counters in stores in the company of Mireille, the combined fragrances mimicked a hostile gas attack. The girl wondered if in high quantities it would burn her throat and eyes. She hoped Mireille knew what she was doing, and wasn't making another sacrifice for her beautifying activities.

If Mireille gave perfume up, as good as it smelt, Kirika wouldn't mourn it too greatly. The woman's own splendid scent was the best. If that could be bottled and its potency increased, Kirika would definitely adore her beloved's use of perfume. With that bait, she might have even garnered the nerve to ask Mireille if she could wear some herself.

It appeared as if Mireille still had more to do at her provisional hair and makeup station when Kirika sighted her producing a series of hairpins. Mireille took up her hairbrush again, and looked into the small mirror while she gathered and combed her hair into a ponytail held in her left hand. From there Kirika started to lose track of movement of Mireille's hair, although her acute eyesight still traced the blonde's hand motions. The ponytail disappeared into a funnel of flaxen lacks, and Mireille stuck pins seemingly haphazardly in a forming blonde bonnet. When the woman's hands slowed into patting loose hairs into position, Kirika could take in what she had done.

Mireille had folded her long mane somehow in upon itself, the crease visible at the back of her head. It was like two winding waves meeting and plunging together down a narrow crack, or alternatively blonde silk bubbling up from a crevice. Kirika recognised it as a bun of some style. A mound of hair coiled somewhat on top of Mireille's head gave her extra height, but it wasn't total neatness with a large tress allowed to lightly curl down her left cheek. It was elegant, yet the faint disarray alluded at a wilder charm. For all its complex grandeur, the style could not measure up to Mireille's hair hanging loose and natural about her shoulders and sinuous down her back. Other styles did have their individual virtues, but Kirika liked that simple, free, unembellished style best, which providentially the exquisite woman normally retained. It was how she saw Mireille for the first time waking in the morning, and was her last vision of her when she went to sleep at night-relaxed and as herself. The classy makeup, the piquant perfume-what they afforded was appealing and not the least bit unwelcome, however it was lazing Mireille in her nightwear that Kirika remembered most.

There was no more beauty to be coaxed from Mireille's body; all that remained was to arm it, the thorns to a rose. Mireille seized her pistol and ammunition holster from where it was looped over one drawer's handle, and then strapped it onto her torso. Her Walther P99, definitely out of place among the hair and cosmetics items, was grasped next. The suppresser was already fitted to its barrel, and subsequent to checking that there was a bullet in the gun's chamber via a partial tug on the slide, the blonde secured it firmly in the holster against her ribs.

Observing Mireille caused Kirika to be conscious of her own pistol flush to her body stuck in her skirt behind her back and covered by her jacket, concealed, silenced, and loaded. When it was next revealed at her behest, it would be the death of at least one soul.

Mireille picked her jacket off the bed and put it on over her holster and the weapon within the leather sleeve, and fastened its two front buttons to hold it closed. She flicked her shirt's broader collar outside over the jacket's, inspected her cuffs, and finding them satisfactory favoured Kirika with her attention. The woman smiled a little at the younger girl, only just an arc to her mouth, and approached her, her eyes focused below Kirika's own.

Wordlessly Mireille touched the red cord tied into a loose bow at Kirika's throat, before deciding to tighten the knot slightly with both her hands. Kirika peered downward along her nose while Mireille did; noting that the woman's nails neared if not matched the lavender tone of her suit.

Mireille lifted her eyes to Kirika's when she was content with the bow, although her fingertips lingered on the girl's collar. The blonde probed with her eyes, searching for doubt or hesitation-searching if the reluctance she had surely sensed throughout their four days of waiting had matured into something deeper. But Kirika knew there was nothing to find; even her early reservations were under control today. Despite the sadness, the wishes for home, and the longing for another day of quiet waiting, when the moment to kill arrived, it was easy to fulfill. It was the aftermath that ate at her soul to admit the darkness. But Kirika fought for Mireille; she fought to protect her. She had to hold onto that and remember why the sins were permissible. She had to hold onto it as a talisman against the creeping darkness inside herself. With that defence Kirika could do what she had to, just like she had in the Metro station, the club in Pigalle Place, and in Albert Laroque's estate back in Paris. If it was for Mireille, Kirika could and would do anything.

Kirika's steely reddish-brown gaze proved her resolve before Mireille's intent eyes. The dark haired assassin gave a small brief nod, and Mireille's lips creased into a slightly fuller smile. Compunction would trouble Kirika no more.

* * *

The train sped along its tracks, the latest curve jostling Mireille into a fellow passenger; a bespectacled man in a suit who accepted the shove as an inevitability, leaning with it but displaying no other reaction. Mireille, not so accustomed to these rigours, strengthened her grip on the handle attached to the railing overhead and used it to rock herself back into her tiny cubby amid the jam of commuters, her jaw set tightly as she battled mounting irritation. It was the early hours on a weekday morning-a hectic time to travel wherever you were in the world. However, the carriage seemed to be packed to capacity-and pushed rather beyond it, to the likes Mireille-albeit no veteran with merely a narrow exposure to riding public Parisian trains-hadn't witnessed before on the Metro back home.

Businesswomen and businessmen on their way to the office and schoolchildren on their way to school made up most of the crush, with those in suits outnumbering those in uniform. Mireille and Kirika mingled fluidly dressed as they were, although the illusion might have been improved if the latter teen girl had been clothed in her school uniform.

With so many bodies crammed together like an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle, the atmosphere was stifling. The reek of other people's cheap cologne, the pong of those filthy individuals that hadn't washed and then attempted to hide their stench beneath a cloying blanket of deodorant, the stinking sweat oozing from dozens of overheating bodies despite the cold weather outside the speeding train, the bad breath puffing over her shoulders from too near passengers; it all combined pungent forces into a single polluting environment bent on offending Mireille's nose and reinforcing her distaste for public transportation. This had to be it at its worst. Japan had much too many people, or perhaps every one of them had just opted to board this train today, after also stuffing the first train Mireille and Kirika had rode on in Kawasaki.

The railway was the quickest and easiest-although that last was beginning to look disputable from Mireille's standpoint-mode of travel into Yokohama and to its courthouse, and the assassins, seemingly just like the majority of the morning's travelers, had chosen to make full use of it. The claustrophobic train was the third in succession the young women had stepped aboard-the first in Kawasaki, and into a similar press of people, to take the pair to the second that had transported them to Yokohama to shortly later catch the present train that would drop them in the vicinity of Yokohama District Court. The second train hadn't been the ordeal the first was, and that the third was being; a fortunate mercy, since the time aboard had been the longest of the three up to now. The bullet train running between Kawasaki and Yokohama had contained a comfy seat for every passenger and there had been abundant vacant, qualities that had championed a quiet and relaxed transit. Furthermore, whilst it was true it had been the lengthiest leg of Mireille and Kirika's trip to the courthouse, it had taken fewer than thirty minutes to switch cities. The luxury of the intercity carriage so soon after the cramped conditions of the local Kawasaki train had also seemed to propel the bullet train down the track at even greater velocity. Comfort could condense the longest voyage, while the want of it could stretch out the shortest… in particular if you were one of a multitude of sardines in a tin can, and one without a seat.

Although standing with almost no room to move, Mireille's legs weren't throbbing-she would be a miserable contract killer if her fitness was that appalling-but when the option was there, sitting down was always better than standing up in a densely crowded and lasting setting such at this. Yet Mireille had been stanch in rejecting her chance to keep off her feet. Kirika hadn't uttered it openly, sparing with her soft-spoken voice as she was, but the blonde had sensed the girl's insistence that she take the lone available seat when they had initially boarded the train. Mireille had had to really beat the proposition back, and even then it had been no small accomplishment given how accommodating Kirika was, and how habitually the older woman took advantage of her obliging demeanor. Mireille was aware she invited that altruistic behaviour; her passive acceptance the same as active encouragement; and thus Kirika did not turn from sacrificing her own well being to promote the blonde's at every opportunity. Subsequent to much unsure dithering on Kirika's part, Mireille's eventual recourse had been to firmly fold her arms in finality and flat out state that Kirika sit down. The idea of threatening that someone would steal the seat if neither of them occupied it before long had crossed Mireille's mind, but it would have been just like Kirika to opt to stand beside her in that case and share her level of discomfort. Mireille felt it not past her to have given her sometimes vexingly loyal companion a little push into the seat if it had come to that.

Mireille was starting to wonder at her decision now, and the occasional dubious look Kirika gave her wasn't helping her shaky selfless resolve. Kirika was very much raring to donate her seat at a split second's notice; she wanted to, the Corsican could tell; all she had to do was ask. However, Mireille thought of the temptation she would never-she hoped not, anyway-yield to and the unpleasant proximity of the other passengers around her as penance for earlier this morning and what's more it served as grooming for her to be the hospitable one from time to time. The woman did like Kirika's helpful nature; like it a bit too much that she was beginning to take it for granted. That Mireille's guilt over feeling that way and over Kirika deferring to her constantly was remote and glossed over was a sign of concern. If they were going to be in a… a real relationship, there had to be equal give and take between them… more or less.

Mireille sighed at herself. She was spoiled and bossy and she knew it. It wasn't going to be simple or painless to break out of her self-centred habits. Being Kirika's elder automatically put her in the commanding role too and allotted justification to her dictatorship, a position she additionally maintained in their work. But it couldn't be the same; Mireille was in charge of assignments because she was the more capable in that responsibility. It was life and death there, not life and love. In their private life Mireille's leadership should be exercised to merely guide and advise-not rule. Kirika wasn't her servant; she was her partner… her lover. Her equal. It was the ideal, and would hold in spirit; however Mireille would probably always retain some dominance over the younger girl as a consequence to her age and experience. But she would see it diminish as much as it could.

Kirika took respite from pouting at Mireille; unbeknownst to the girl granting her grateful partner a reprieve as well; to turn her head around and favour the window behind her and its streaming views broken by the occasional overpass or tunnel with her doe-eyed stare for a while. Guilt smeared across the blonde's conscience, and stern tolerance of her circumstances standing in the tight throng rose where a pit of complaint only had root before. This was Mireille's penance as much as it was her start at a more considerate self. The blonde had immediately felt shamed upon chiding Kirika for her customary window gazing back at the Yuumura house, and the remorse had worn on her from then on. As understated as the comment had been, Mireille was cognisant that she had intended there be sarcasm; sarcasm Kirika likely hadn't figured out going by her response. That innocence in the face of the Corsican's callousness could have brought a lump to her throat if she'd been a less disciplined woman. But Mireille could no longer tame her heart when it concerned her beloved partner, and it was shown no such leniency. It hurt. She was trying to make amends in her tacit fashion; amends for a slight Kirika probably wasn't even aware of; but it still hurt. Perhaps it was because it was penance more to soothe herself, seeing as Kirika was ignorant to her wrongdoing. Moreover, she was causing her partner some added distress too in not sitting down in Kirika's seat like the girl desired, even though it was secretly for her benefit. Mireille had never been good at apologies-she'd had little practice at it given that her conscience seldom bothered her to make any. But it was something, and Mireille was nothing if not a woman who took responsibility for her actions… when they harmed someone who mattered to her.

Mireille believed the tension of the morning was the culprit for her prickly mood earlier-being in Japan under Breffort's conditions grated on her relentlessly-though the time to shake Soldats and the conniving man off her and Kirika's backs was now. But their being here wrested a toll from Kirika too. Every traveller of the black path had their method of coping with its severity and adversity; some smoked compulsively, some drank for numbness; some found peace with family or in the arms of lovers, others in the euphoria of mind-altering substances. Kirika had her windows and whatever vista she saw through them. It was a tiny and simplistic vice for one so tortured. The girl had pursued another pastime before in painting, but leisure that involved people not on the path had a tendency to steer them toward it, and normally not of their own volition. That lesson had been inked in pain inside Kirika.

Mireille shouldn't get in the way of her partner's unobtrusive diversion-she couldn't interpret it herself, nevertheless what her lover saw from her windowsill roost had to be meaningful and worthy of interest-although before this morning she'd seen no reason to meddle. That reason today of course had been baseless and uncalled for-there could be dangerous eyes outside their safehouse, but Kirika was not some amateur hired gun; she was arguably the finest professional killer in the world. She knew perfectly well what to be on guard for when indulging in her usually harmless window-watching fetish, and her precautions were no doubt impeccable. Kirika was not some young girl-she was an assassin just like Mireille.

And as for Mireille's distractions, she was partial to shopping in boutiques and dining out at fine restaurants, these days with Kirika to join in on her pleasures. The company certainly improved upon the outings, not to mention having someone else to buy clothes for. There were many cute ensembles that Mireille had always fancied, but she knew would not suit her. Kirika's body and general air was not so fraught, to Mireille's great delight and continued entertainment.

Mireille smiled faintly to herself, gazing down at Kirika. Even while they were closing in on another meeting with opposing travellers on the black path, the feelings Kirika drew from her could still keep her warm. She'd always have that console, no matter how dire the twists and how barbed the turns on the dark road became. Something beautiful took the journey with Mireille; something pure and good that couldn't be corrupted in the immorality surrounding her life, something private just for her… and for the girl who made that beauty possible. It made the difference in the Corsican's days. Mireille hadn't really lived until falling in love.

Simply looking at Kirika rubbed away the passenger cage, pushing it back; well back; to some place behind Mireille's senses. The annoyance the train generated became an equivocal sentiment; the reason for even having the feeling a developing mystery the blonde didn't care to study. As Kirika watched the passing streets and buildings outside the window Mireille watched her, and discovered the view just as enchanting.

Suddenly Kirika's eyes veered from the glass and in the next fraction of a second her right hand shot out while her body stretched to catch up, seizing something behind Mireille. The something gasped as Mireille jerked into full wakefulness, and the woman turned, her own hand thrust inside her jacket for her firearm and with no time to curse her daydreaming.

Kirika had caught a man's wrist, his hand, rigid and trembling in the assassin's white-knuckled grip, kept mere inches from touching Mireille's rump. There was no weapon in his grasp, but in his other was a briefcase. On inspection he appeared an everyday businessman in suit and tie; albeit with a face drawn and horrified; a commuter in a host of commuters on his way to work.

Mireille blinked a few times, it taking a moment for her would-be assailant's intention to sink in. He'd wanted to grope her. He'd wanted to grope her… *her*…!

Mireille shuffled her rear as far as she could from the outstretched claw, cold death in her blue eyes for the petrified pervert owner. The audacity! She wasn't certain if she wanted to let go of her gun, but eventually she removed her hand from within her jacket and signalled to Kirika in the form of a grudging scowl to release her almost molester. Mireille wagered her partner's crushing fist was sufficient castigation while being appropriately lowkey, unlike what the Corsican *wished* she could inflict. She knew his offence didn't warrant getting shot-well, except perhaps if the wandering hand…. She shooed that image away-but at the minute nothing seemed too brutal. Mireille let her emotions go swiftly however; her violence was not without temperance, and, for that matter, was not unnecessarily sadistic when employed. Still, she hoped the man was right-handed. He'd find today at the office rather pain-ridden and frustrating.

As the groper disguised as a businessman clutched his injured wrist and melted back into his camouflage of passengers before anyone noticed his vile action, Mireille was reminded it wasn't just people's odours and their pooled heat that posed problems in these close quarters. There were dangers in a crowd; it held the potential to be as treacherous as a stormy ocean. A weapon could very circumspectly be drawn and continue to go unnoticed within a swarm of oblivious people, and the target for that weapon in the swarm could be approached with all secrecy under a mimicked air of casualness. When the body fell amongst the maze of feet and people started to stir from apathy, the slayer would by then have blended into the sea of faces, the corpse her or his only sign of being there. Mireille had had her brushes with killers in crowds and had been one herself more than once, but the lecher could have been another rival assassin with her demise in mind; the one that had succeeded if not for Kirika's steadfast vigilance.

Kirika studied Mireille's face for a moment before leaning back into her seat, however she seemed to find it a task leaving her partner's features alone for longer than a couple of seconds.

Mireille's chin dropped, and her eyes were pushed askance from Kirika's prying looks. The warped contours of her lips articulated her displeasure, but it was not for the girl before her. Mireille had been concerned about the problems her partner's sentimentality could bring to their business, yet it looked as if it was her own she needed to begin seriously cracking down on. Affectionate behaviour in front of those who could use it as a tool against them was the bounds of the blonde's worries for how Kirika might handle the changes between them, but nothing to give validation to that concern had transpired. Granted, it was still very much the beginnings of their romantic relationship, and still in private Kirika had yet to branch out from being the quiet and withdrawn girl Mireille knew her as. Regardless, in the meantime Mireille was an ever-ripening tumult of emotion. Tender emotion she had grown to adore, but there was a time and a place for the feelings, and when working was neither. Kirika had kept her head about her; Mireille must have no less focus, or *she* might become the one to commence the inappropriate intimate touches whilst adversaries looked on, if her carelessness didn't see her dead first.

The blonde blanched and then cringed at the thought-at the thought of being rendered unable to keep her hands off Kirika, that was to say; it was a nightmare for some reason more demoralising than being killed for negligence-and blew the flaxen tress suspended by her cheek out of her face, just for it to fly back into its former spot. Mireille's hair was done up in a French twist-part of her small effort to alter her appearance from her norm. Ryosuke and Vincent could recognise her on sight; even a slight variation to her looks would help to ease their eyes over and past her. The clump of hair in her face obscured her features a little too, and if not for that Mireille would have considered donning glasses to give further doubt to her identity. Nothing she could do would hold up to a close inspection however, and her being a foreigner who stuck out did much to counteract her masquerade as an insignificant court attendee.

Kirika, her face known by their prey too, had difficulties as well with her cover despite being Japanese-she was a high school aged girl and might cause attention wandering the courthouse because of that. However, she wore a suit like Mireille to blend in and such tactics had worked in the past. Perhaps onlookers saw Kirika as simply a short woman, or as a youth with familial grounds to be in court. Still, up close she would easily be identified also. It was hard to overlook such a cute face.

But the Corsican assassin didn't intend for them to get near enough that either of the men or their personnel could distinguish her or Kirika as Noir, not until she decided to at any rate. And then whether they recognised them or not wouldn't matter.

More distaste kept Mireille's expression sour and poor Kirika perturbed as the seated girl divided her time staring at her and trying not to. Like it or not, that was what Ryosuke and Vincent and those they had spread the information to regarded Mireille and Kirika as-Noir, the hands of Soldats. Severed hands, if the men had believed the Corsican when she had denied the association with the organisation. In any case, her and her partner's label was unlikely to change now, and the woman had to put up with it if not celebrate being saddled with the title. It was the truth at the end of the day, for all of Mireille's dislike and refusals. She and Kirika had earned the name like no other who had adopted it before, and it was not so straightforwardly renounced. At the very least, the reputation that came with the name should put fear into their quarry and any who would join Ishinomori's side. Fear was a good edge to have. A terrified target made irrational mistakes and hesitated when confronted with the face of their fear, and a fleeing target put up paltry resistance. Mireille had no reservations against shooting someone pleading for their life.

Mireille could tell that it wasn't in Ryosuke's nature to beg, however. Vincent, maybe…. Yet each man had faced down Noir with cool composure and blazing gunfire. The Corsican assassin recognised talent when she saw it, and this pair had enough to keep her sharp. They knew the path and had treaded it for a long time. But Ryosuke and Vincent were still going to die.

There were others apart from Ishinomori's crew to watch for. The courthouse would probably have descended into a hubbub of activity over Kaede's Ishinomori's high-profile attendance, with media presence thick. That meant people with cameras, a weapon as prospectively lethal to anonymity as a gun was to a human being. Mireille and Kirika would have to be sure to stay clear of their shots as though they were bullets, at least when the real bullets started to fly. Photographic evidence linking them to the hit being plastered over tonight's news generated renown Mireille would rather not have.

There were the closed circuit cameras of the courthouse itself to avoid whenever possible as well, although even knowing where each was thanks to Jacques' blueprints, it would be quite a game of hide and seek to win. The cover of the crowd and the young assassins' ability to become one with it would be their defence if caught on either type of film; as long as they appeared innocuous in the background, seemingly distant from events, they were virtually inoculated to exposure. That said; nothing more than cooling bodies and harmless empty bullet casings was the preferred calling card.

The Japanese police would be out in force like the media, and manning select chokepoints equipped with metal detectors and x-ray machines. The courtrooms themselves, particularly the one where Kaede's trial was to be held, would be all but inaccessible to someone carrying a firearm, but the bigger hindrance was the security station screening all visitors that ventured outside the lobby area to access more of the courthouse. Smuggling a Walther P99 and a Beretta M1934 past that would border on impossible. But of course, a professional assassin didn't voluntarily wander through a metal detector or into a waiting frisk when it wasn't in her interests, and there was never merely a single way to enter and move around in a building, irrespective of how fortified it was. Jacques' blueprints had spared no detail.

The train slowed down, and Mireille braced herself for the coming jolt as the bed of air she had been riding began to feel more and more like solid ground. The parroting chirp of the announcer from a speaker somewhere overhead declared the approaching station twice over-sweet relief for some, and a welcome milestone for those remaining. It was Mireille and Kirika's final stop too, but while their relief might flow sweeter than most for more reasons than just escaping the cramped conditions, bitterness was there to dampen it. They shouldn't be here, but here they were. Nothing could help that now, though. At least the days of difficult waiting were at an end, and Mireille and Kirika had the chance to shape their own fate at last.

Mireille looked at Kirika, and her partner returned the stare. Their eyes were the same. There was nothing more to say or to think about-except going home. The blonde assassin hadn't forgotten about Langonel's Manuscript, but the stolen tome could be buried with Ryosuke and Vincent for all it mattered now. Whatever intentions they had for it would die with them. The book had importance, and Mireille would have scooped it up into her own safekeeping if given the opportunity, but it wasn't vital in the sense she and her partner must go out of their way to retrieve it. Let it be lost again, an overlooked relic amongst a dead family's possessions.

The jolt Mireille had been anticipating arrived, staggering her slightly, and the station's platform rolled to a dead stop in the train's windows. The carriage's doors opened with a whoosh, and Kirika got to her feet to stand close beside Mireille.

Noir had a court date to attend.

* * *

The column of black sedans and one limousine carved through the Yokohama morning traffic with the conviction and resulting ease an outward portrayal of authority sanctioned; the bumper to bumper line of expensive and important-looking vehicles forbidding enough for the average motorist to give the right of way to. Conduct yourself like you are meant to be where you are and doing what you are doing, and only those with mettle questioned your being. Ryosuke believed the motorcade could push through red lights and teeming pedestrian crossings if willing. Strength was uncommon among the mundane and complacent masses. They would rather bend in the wind than throw themselves against it and risk snapping.

There was none of that wretched sort in this car-at least those that mattered were not. Vin sat on Ryosuke's right, dressed in a yellow suit and red tie that spoke loudly of his probable aspiration of trampling all over the district court's decorum. He fiddled with his new knife; a butterfly knife to succeed the switchblade left behind in a mansion's library in Paris; flipping its bite handle open to expose the length of sharpened steel for a second and then snapping his wrist in the opposite direction, letting momentum close the two handles together again over the blade.

"Just like in the movies," Vin muttered, before thumbing off the handles' latch and spinning the knife edge into view once more.

Ken was at Ryosuke's left side, occasionally glancing at Vin while he played with his latest toy. He sat stiffer than his laidback habit, his many ring-adorned fingers-the nine that could-clutching his parted knees. He was probably worried about Kaede and her fate, but he needn't have. This appearance in Yokohama District Court was a formality, and Ken was aware of it. He was a worrier by nature, though.

Ken had clothed himself smarter than usual for the occasion in spite of its redundancy-a crisp white suit and Hawaiian shirt of giant orange blossoms on cream was prim for him. He would always look the gangster no matter what he wore, but sometimes Ryosuke thought he embraced the yakuza stereotype and fed on that image. The older man likened it to a peacock's show of fanned feathers; it had its uses as warning to the weak and lure to the curious, although Ryosuke doubted Ken was as lucrative with the ladies as Vin. Only certain kinds of women considered an openly dangerous and brash criminal a thrilling romantic liaison for long.

Taking up the black leather seats across from Ryosuke and his brothers were three women who likely preferred the company of gangsters, although Ken still had no chance with any of them, even before Ryosuke's objections. Kaede sat in the middle directly opposite Ryosuke, fashionably clad in one of the pantsuits she seemed to like. Ryosuke recognised Dominique's hand when he saw it. The girl he knew had liked skipping about in colourful floral summer dresses, not the severe and rigid business attire of today. It pained Ryosuke that she had become like him. Kaede was as strong as anyone he knew, but he had never intended for her to live his life.

The mother hen in a skin to pair her to her chick, except a skirt and stockings substituted for the pants, sat alongside Ryosuke's little sister, their legs pressed against one another despite the spacious seating. Ryosuke was sure Dominique had arranged herself that close to Kaede just to rankle him. Kaede's decline had started with that woman and it would end with her. No matter what she liked to think, Dominique wasn't family. She was a foreign invader in Ryosuke's hate-filled eyes, and a Machiavellian puppeteer, and he would find a way to cleanly extricate her deeply sunken claws from his only remaining kin before she completely destroyed all that his family had accomplished… and destroyed Kaede, too. She was Soldats, and just as accountable for his mother and father's passing as the other Soldats members they were fighting. Watching Dominique's influence twist his sister into a sick protégé of hers became more grueling every day. Dominique loved to parade Kaede's prevailing affection for her in front of him, such that even steel's patience would start to bend.

Spotting the attention, Kaede grinned at Ryosuke and mouthed 'Big Brother' before giving him a little wave, her crumbling mind that of a simpleton's to her sibling's troubles. Ryosuke merely stared back while Dominique shot Kaede a sidelong disapproving look and irritated frown. There was still hope.

The last woman in the back of the limo was Fumiko Morita, sitting on the other side of Kaede. She could have been mistaken for a mere friend of Kaede's, albeit a shy and reclusive one. The young woman was clothed as Kaede would have been in a better time; in a straightforward moss-green dress under a white shawl, and a white sunhat with a garland of black and white ribbon and lace atop her green locks. She looked pretty, but Fumiko always was. That was *all* she was-a pretty thing to look at. Fumiko had amounted to nothing greater since Ryosuke first saw her, but in her defence opportunity for becoming something more had been cut from her destiny. Still, it wasn't an excuse for being weak and pathetic. Courage and strength was best found during adversity, and Fumiko lived her harsh life in just such a realm.

It was demonstration of the depth of Fumiko's captivity that she was here in the limo today, outside and unshackled in the free world-outside, yet a caged animal still. The bars of her prison traveled with her now wherever she went. Ryosuke wondered if Fumiko ever toyed with the thought of escape these days, or if she had accepted what her life was now. The woman had tried to flee when initially awarded to Kaede like a wad of banknotes; however her keeper was fond of her, and was unyielding in demanding obedience. It hadn't taken many recaptures and subsequent punishments for Fumiko to stop running away and submit herself to Kaede's wants. She had been domesticated, a dog that came and sat at her mistress's direction.

To Ryosuke, Fumiko was one of the feeble masses in the streets outside the limo, taken into a world too unkind for her. Had fear trapped Fumiko in her cage? If she was that desperate for freedom, Ryosuke believed nothing would keep her from striving for that hope. But there were no more escape attempts from her, no more screaming and bawling; no more defiance for a very long time. She had given up. Was it fear, or did Fumiko like it? Did she like serving? Would she become as disgusting as Claire, a willing whore who moaned in ecstasy in her slavery? Or had Fumiko already become as filthy, deep down inside?

Ryosuke wanted to hate her, despise her and spit at the thought of her as he did Claire-who Kaede had thankfully left behind at Ishinomori Tower, against Dominique's suggestion that the slothful and pampered redhead should accompany her. Ordinarily Ryosuke abhorred frailty as Fumiko possessed with every fibre of his indomitable being, but he knew himself enough to recognise he forced himself too hard to deride her existence. Fumiko was so quiet, and seemed so… small. If not for her beauty, one could forget she was in the room. Ryosuke wanted to hate her, but in his heart there was little of that for Fumiko. How could you hate something so fragile and beautiful? What was the point.

The smoky windows of the limousine prevented onlookers from peering inside, but they were not curtains, and the morning's rays pierced inside the backseat where people's eyes could not. Ryosuke's round sunglasses where there to meet the glaring sunbeams that got through however, the blue lenses glinting like jewels. The windows first role wasn't as a privacy screen-they would halt a bullet. The vehicle's chassis too was resistant to gunfire among other ordnance-its armour plating was thick and durable to the degree a determined rocket propelled grenade would not penetrate. The tires were still vulnerable being not completely immune to puncture, however they would fill with some jelly-like substance if pierced, ensuring that the limo's wheels would continue rolling and keep it on the road.

There were possibly more countermeasures Ryosuke wasn't aware of, but he knew of ample to realise the limousine was a secure way to move around the city. It wasn't a tank, but it came close. Dominique had ordered and overseen the construction of the vehicle, and while the defensive upgrades had cost more than the car itself, the woman hadn't skimped on the bill. Ryosuke grudgingly understood her meticulous attention. His mother, Hikaru, had lost her life travelling in a motorcade. Ryosuke had heard that the car she'd been in had been reinforced, but hadn't been robust enough to withstand the furious Soldats assault that had assailed it. Dominique had been there, so he had been told; hence, her background aside, she knew well what armaments Soldats could potentially bring to bear against them. It was strange to Ryosuke that Dominique could survive in a bullet-ravaged car without a scratch while his mother succumbed. People had consoled her for her loss for a long time, and she had looked dejected, but Ryosuke couldn't stop himself manufacturing secret plots centring on the French woman in his head. Maybe Dominique had been involved in his mother's murder as well as his father's. Maybe she had tired of Hikaru, and seen the future in Kaede. Would she tire of Kaede too, once she had wrenched all use out of her? Ignoring her obnoxious gestures, Dominique did appear to care about Kaede's physical wellbeing. Whether because she genuinely worried for Ryosuke's sister or worried for her as someone did their precious possession, was yet another nefarious notion unproven one way or the other.

Through the azure shade of his sunglasses, Ryosuke glimpsed the brief looks Dominique snuck at Kaede. He didn't think anyone else in the backseat noticed them; perhaps not even Dominique herself realised her behaviour-but he did. He wasn't certainShe was nervous, but it wasn't about the trial. Kaede had been confined to the protection of Ishinomori Tower almost since their mother's death under Dominique's direction; the girl hadn't even gone out to visit their parents' graves. Ryosuke had gone in her stead and passed on her love and respects; Dominique wasn't concerned about his safety like she was his little sister's. There was freedom in that though; Kaede had none, although Ryosuke didn't believe it had dawned on her. Today was the first time she had gone out into the city like this, and it was the first time the outfitted limousine with its primary occupant inside was put to the test. Ryosuke admitted he wasn't exactly relaxed about Kaede leaving the shelter of home, but he was confident that she was safe. He was here after all, as was some of the Kanagawa Kotetsu, packed into the last car of the convoy. Kaede could always place her faith in them, like her older brother did. Dominique didn't think much of Ryosuke's comrades or the Ishinomori family's soldiers-'drones' she had cruelly remarked once, when she'd known he was listening and Kaede was not-but she should have had trust in her own personnel riding in the other cars to guard Kaede; the gaijin was their leader, and a good leader should believe in those that followed them. Ryosuke didn't have that trust in Dominique's followers himself of course, however he had witnessed the black-clad women at work and they were top-rate at what they did… when they weren't letting his brothers-in-arms die in their stead. Then again, they were still Soldats. How could anyone in that group, even amongst the rebels, trust anybody else in it? It was in their nature to be cunning and treacherous.

Ryosuke heard the crowds before he saw them. The media hive had been shaken this morning, and journalists and photographers buzzed around Yokohama District Courthouse's steps. It was a waste of their time; there was no story here but of a quick acquittal. Drug charges, of all things… if the law only knew the horrors Kaede had perpetrated. Ryosuke would have laughed if he still remembered how, and if his nightmares were not the stuff of those horrors, starring the distorted, demonic image of his beloved sister of present day.

The motorcade parked in front of the courthouse, each car waiting for the one behind it to catch up and stop before the doors started to swing open. The bodyguards were the first on the pavement; Kanagawa Kotetsu members and Dominique's supporters, who pushed back the mob wielding cameras and microphones. Ryosuke's men weren't shy regarding that job-he heard their raucous bellows even above the media's squawked inquiries. For his brothers' sakes he hoped they kept it to shoves and shoulder barges; Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals did have a respectable image to represent, or it had before all this trouble. At any rate, repairing it could do without assault charges being filed against Ryosuke's men. It would be something new for Dominique to rub in Ryosuke's face and bemoan to Kaede also, and he could do without that.

A woman belonging to Dominique's faction opened the limo's curb-side passenger door-part of Kaede's personal bodyguard that the French woman had forcibly appointed to loiter around Ryosuke's sibling. The rest of the group erected a niche focused around the door while maintaining watch on the rabble they kept back with hard looks or the eyeless stare of dark sunspecs; black monoliths cold as stone and just as still and silent.

Vin ambled out of the vehicle before anyone else, antagonising Dominique and the guards with his disrespect, whether that was his intention or not. Female tongues clicked to condemn him; even the statues lapsed for a pithy flicker of life; and Ryosuke would have frowned on Vin's slight toward Kaede as well, but a look at his spacey sister verified she didn't seem conscious of it, and Ryosuke wasn't one to raise objection to his partner's larks when it incensed the Soldats mutineers satisfyingly so.

Dominique had to lay her hand on Kaede's forearm to alert her to the fact they had arrived at the courthouse, and the roused Kaede, like a toppled domino in a row, pushed Fumiko toward the open limousine door. Fumiko, who until then had been sitting passively like a doll with its strings put down, furtively stepped into the shadow of the courthouse, her skittering frightened blue eyes absorbing the wild media circus waiting for her. For a moment a pang of understanding struck Ryosuke, but it didn't live long enough to make a dent in his heart. It was sympathy for an animal scared by loud noises and too much attention. Kaede should have left all the pets at home.

Kaede exited the limo at Fumiko's heels, the chum in the water that whipped up the swarm of journalists and cameramen, their hunger great enough to tempt pushing against Ryosuke and Dominique's soldiers. The yakuza and Soldats renegades saw to it that the renewed pluck was short-lived. Kaede never spoke to the representatives of the media anyway. For one, she was in the haven of home as a rule, and declined all requests for statements or interviews from those who wished to breach that haven. It was Dominique who actually issued the refusals-it was she who spoke for Kaede, the white-haired puppet on her lap. He could grumble, but Ryosuke imagined it was a wise choice on his foil's part. Kaede's blather was frequently a window into her insanity, and heaven knew Ryosuke was no wordsmith. It was a weakness having Dominique as Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals official voice to the public; it was one more rein firmly in the gaijin's hands. She did a good job though-as expected with that forked Soldats tongue in her head-and for now looked to agree with Ryosuke's interest in appearing as a benign and lawful company.

'Appearing as a benign and lawful company'. When Ryosuke's mother had reigned, her business's appearance had been truly clean. There was nothing pure about it now. The home he remembered fondly only existed in his memory and heart.

Dominique curled her made-up lips at Ryosuke before she gathered her handbag and documents and followed Kaede-a kind and rather beautiful smile if you weren't aware of the undertones. Ryosuke only saw a stuck-up and provoking smirk.

Ryosuke remained seated as he heard the hubbub move away from him, making their way up the stairs to the courthouse. Dominique's lawyers were likely with Kaede and the others by now, fending off questions from the avid media like bodyguards would attacks. The lawyers were attached to Soldats like every other woman allied with Dominique, armed with briefcases and law degrees. They weren't warriors, their intellects were their weapons. There were many like that in Dominique's service, and like the brawn, the brains were in the top of their fields.

Ryosuke thought four solicitors excessive for today's affairs, but they didn't have much to do usually, so maybe they were overeager regarding this last morsel of work. It created a striking show of force, at any rate. Three of them were foreigners as well, which routinely made an impression. However, with countless foreigners accompanying the Ishinomori family nowadays, the appeal should have worn off long ago.

Ryosuke turned his head to Ken briefly; who had calmed down if he had ever been tense; and the two men shared an expressionless look. They may as well get this meaningless demonstration over with.

Ryosuke climbed out of the limousine to behold Kaede and her band of guards and attendants, and the media mass attached to the collective entourage, reach the court step's entrance plateau and squeeze into the building's lobby. Vin was nowhere in sight, probably smothered in the crowd somehow despite his bright suit, but a couple of Ryosuke's men were hanging around the cars despite the glares the Soldats women who had also stayed put were hurling at them. The glares turned to Ryosuke and Ken when the latter shut the limo's passenger door, their coldness speaking of the women's dislike at their punctuality.

Ryosuke adjusted his sunglasses and shrugged off the inhospitable looks with the ease of habit, and marched up the steps to the sounds of car engines revving in his wake. He glanced over his shoulder as the motorcade moved to the opposite side of the street to park for the long-term, and caught Ken waving at the Kanagawa Kotetsu pair to abandon the face-off and come to him. Ryosuke paused mid-step on the stairs, watching his subordinate as Ken shielded his eyes from the little sun there was with a hand over his brow, waiting for the two men to reach him. Ryosuke felt it ill-advised pulling the men from the motorcade and leaving it solely in the women's hands, but he guessed needless conflict could arise if the two were left alone and outnumbered by their female counterparts. The visit to the courthouse shouldn't last long in any case, and while Ryosuke didn't trust Dominique's guards and drivers, he did trust their abilities. It still didn't sit right on his shoulders as he resumed his ascent, but he let it go.

Ken and the two gangsters-Nobuo and Takeo; Ryosuke put names to the faces; he remembered every one of the men who had thrown in their lot with him-jogged up the stairs to join him, falling in line beside him. "No choppers," Ken muttered. Ryosuke guessed that he was searching the skies earlier, not blocking the sun.

"Lost interest now the show's moved inside," Takeo drawled between chews on his gum. While Ken dressed to fit and played the part, Takeo accented his speech to bark like a classic yakuza in the movies. There was more to being a gangster than wearing the skin and talking the talk, but neither man was a weakling pretending to live the life. It was just their way.

"Or we're not as high profile as we think," Ryosuke grunted. There had to be something more fascinating happening in Yokohama than an inconsequential court case. Damn slow news day if there wasn't.

By the time Ryosuke, Ken, Nobuo and Takeo strode into the courthouse, Kaede and most of her flock had passed into the corridors leading to the courtrooms, shedding numerous journalists and photographers as the throng dealt with a security checkpoint's restrictions. Ryosuke's sister and the privileged in her party-namely those wearing black-were free of such delays; greased palms and delicate coercion days earlier saw clear and easy passage through Yokohama District Court's halls. The bought freedom didn't extend to the Kanagawa Kotetsu, whose members mingled with the discarded press. Dominique had purchased permits for her Soldats society; none of Ryosuke's men were listed on them. Ryosuke had tried to pay his and his colleagues' way by himself; however Dominique had figuratively salted the ground after she had wrung what she needed from it, as every guard his men had approached had shut the Kanagawa Kotetsu out. Brazen yakuza were too noticeable and Ryosuke's group too well-recognised, the once pliable guards had nitpicked, and even a roughing up hadn't changed the weakest court policeman's mind; only made him bolder in resisting. Consequently the Kanagawa Kotetsu was forsaken to loaf around the courthouse's lobby, none prepared to surrender their arms while joined by Soldats soldiers who had not. But not everyone with Ryosuke was yakuza.

Vin strolled up to Ryosuke, his flashy attire and grandiose gait suddenly easy to pick out amongst the quietening and thinning crowd of people queuing up orderly to be security screened, or settling down in the lobby, or being smart and leaving this meagre blurb in a newspaper altogether. "Here," Vin said without preamble, stepping near and drawing his two pistols from the holsters under his jacket before stuffing them into Ryosuke's grasp, followed by a bundle of magazines. "And don't lose this." The smaller gangster's new knife spun out from behind his back and was slapped into his partner's palm to be secreted away inside Ryosuke's customary long black coat with everything else.

With a grin and tip of his head, Vin walked away to merge with the others waiting in line at the security checkpoint, his only remaining weapons that which his body could become. More than adequate, Ryosuke's cocky friend had assured when they'd discussed his being there in the courtroom's audience last night. Vin would find a way to rearm himself regardless if things really did somehow spiral into a firefight, but he had the skill to survive one without a gun. Ryosuke trusted he wouldn't let Kaede down… that Vin wouldn't let *him* down. Ryosuke would have been at his little sister's side too-*should* have been-yet circumstance turned as it willed and wasn't something one could command absolutely. Moreover, he had an aversion to taking off his coat outside of his quarters. Ryosuke wondered if that translated to Kaede having more courage than he, seeing that she hadn't donned such armour since her yakuza days. More daring perhaps, but she wasn't in her right mind, and the mad could know no fear… and were oblivious to dangers a blind man could see.

Ryosuke interest in the queues diminished as the number of people populating them did, yet as he turned his head the swish of long blonde hair snapped it and his curiosity back to where they had been. His brow clenched as his violet eyes below narrowed and honed, trying to establish a straight path through the heads and shoulders strewn between him and the source of the yellow flash. Noir. It came out of nowhere, the thought of them being here blindsiding him like a shiv in the kidney from his closest friend. He had put them out of his mind, left them and the memory of them behind in Paris. Ryosuke had no time for Noir. Dominique, that stupid bitch. If her petty rivalry with him had set the Parisian wolves pointlessly on their scent, *Kaede's* scent….

The face of a Soldats rebel he had seen before under the blonde tresses in the distance came as a relief, however bitter abhorrence quickly followed. She was stationed there just past the security checkpoint as rearguard-Dominique and her rebels didn't even trust the Kanagawa Kotetsu to guard the courthouse's lobby. The French woman heaped insults upon Ryosuke and his brothers unendingly that one would think him and his men numbed to them, dare say accepting. But at least one of them, Ryosuke, had a long memory; a memory written in grudges and prevailed through tempered hate, slow and deep. So very deep. He was glad it wasn't the blonde half of Noir that he had caught out of the corner of his eye, yet it was Dominique's fault that he had been made to suspect the rebel as the assassin-in a roundabout way, but still *her* fault.

Ryosuke finally let his gaze drop from the security checkpoint, and took out a cigarette. Nobuo and Takeo sparked into action, competing to see which of them could fumble out a lighter or match first. The young ones could sometimes act so green. Nobuo was the victor, and while lighting the cigarette in his mouth Ryosuke noted coolly that the yakuza's hand holding the flame didn't tremble at least.

The smoke swirling into Ryosuke's lungs comforted and then the streams exhaled out his nose calmed. He snorted, plumes of his addiction puffing into the air, and took the cigarette from his lips to stare at it. His mother would never have approved of his smoking. Hikaru Ishinomori wouldn't have approved of many things he did and had done.

Ryosuke blew on the end of the cigarette, the smoulders glowing and ash knocked free to float on his breath. He watched for a moment, before putting it back in his mouth for another drag. Nostalgia was for the dying. The living lived in the now, no matter what it was like.

"Hey! You can't smoke here!"

The call of a courthouse police officer attracted the grim attention of Ryosuke and the gangsters with him, but the officer didn't balk, the institution of the law they were inside and the presence of other officers within it probably reassuring even while facing such yakuza that made up the Kanagawa Kotetsu.

Takeo moved forward with purpose in his step, as if he was going to start something, until Ryosuke's raised hand slapping against his chest held him in place. The right to smoke in the building or not was a small thing to come to blows over, especially with the police.

"Satsu…" Ken jeered, shaking his head a little. "Hah! Damn world is too healthy nowadays. Makes me want to have a smoke." He sneered, showing his teeth, and felt inside his jacket for his cigarettes. "Nobuo! Where's that light!"

"Enough," Ryosuke said. "Remember why you are here." Ken and the others' antics ceased and they had the decency to look sheepish; for gangsters anyway.

Ryosuke glanced at the policeman one last time and then walked toward the lobby's main entrance. He would feel better anyway watching over the motorcade that only Dominique's soldiers were overseeing. Maybe Noir wasn't here, but Soldats-the one Dominique and her women hated-could be. And then there was always the enemy within-the ones who wore black.

* * *

Mireille's right leg kicked where it lay crossed atop the left, as though it were a gasping fish on land, until her conscious mind took notice of her unconscious one's behaviour and she reigned in the tick spurred on by boredom… or was it nerves? It would be the day of her retirement from the life of taking lives if the professional contract killer admitted it were; however there was tension within her regardless of her inner disavowals. To describe her being on an assignment of a personal nature as typical was generous-then again, since meeting Kirika actually being paid for an assignment was what had become atypical. Not that she was struggling for funds; those in the business who were good enough to survive past a few contracts learned to stash away ample for emergencies, though ideally it was retirement money for when they stepped off the black path once and for all. Mireille was better than 'good enough' however-she had some expensive tastes but wasn't overly extravagant in her spending; it would take several years bereft of proper work before she'd have to think about dipping into her rainy day savings.

Personal assignments had their own rewards in place of money, and normally when weighed against a cheque their worth was considerably greater, priceless, which made the assignment itself of more consequence. Mireille and Kirika fought for their own agendas, not some anonymous client's veiled behind a letter, or email or telephone call. The added, private, pressure to succeed could very well encumber as it could support. Emotions weren't for a cold killer, but here Mireille sat, emotion within her-the passion to accomplish her mission at all costs and the dread at the outcome of failure. Her mind, accustomed to a state of cool and calm was there to bring her roiling feelings into accord and promote professional detachment, but the emotive thoughts remained on the outskirts of the void, pressed down yet not blotted out.

There were a lot of people in Yokohama District Court, and Mireille had seen the even bigger crowds waiting outside its doors before she came in. Plenty of human cover-a boon as long as it continued to work to her benefit; as long as she continued to be part of the throng. She felt suitably at home inside the lobby with a newspaper in front of her face, blocking all but the rudely inquisitive to her foreign features. Mireille was a lawyer… a reporter… a translator. A curiosity, but one quickly dismissed once a casual explanation was put to her. She belonged.

The newspaper was chicken-scratch to Mireille without her mop-headed partner to interpret, but her eyes were meant for more than the headlined goings on in Yokohama and the rest of Japan. Her concern was for just a tiny speck of the city-the entrance hall of this municipal building.

The blonde's gaze skimmed over the top of the newspaper in intermittent bursts to take in her perspective of the lobby from sitting in its lounge-picked just for that unsparing perspective-rising and falling with apparent waxing and waning offhand interest to avert answering interest; blue eyes spying, watching-waiting. And if those eyes sometimes drifted across the foyer to pick out a certain girl, Mireille did all she could to keep the interest from shining too brightly in them.

Kirika milled about with the other visitors to the district courthouse, going nowhere yet appearing to have some unreachable heading known only to her. Her nomadic disorientation was postponed every so often by fits of loitering where she simply stopped and looked at her surroundings as though they were new to her, letting the people flow past her like currents in a river, and she the stone. It was cute; sweetness that touched a smile to Mireille's lips, however the woman hoped her partner wasn't selling the lost child cover too forcefully. It wouldn't be a disaster or even a hindrance if a police officer or Good Samaritan identified Kirika's 'plight' before their targets showed up, but the younger assassin had to maintain believability for suspicion to not be levelled at her, now, or later when law enforcement reviewed the lobby's security camera footage. It was fine to be caught on film if determined to be an innocent bystander.

Perhaps it was because Kirika, with her apparent fragile petite figure and ingenuous face prone to innocent expressions, could look perfectly helpless without the façade. All the combat experience, all the murderous know-how-Kirika was still a withdrawn and naïve teenage girl. Who knows; maybe Kirika wasn't acting over there, but just being herself.

It wasn't until Mireille noticed the portly balding man sitting on the sofa opposite looking at her that she realised the newspaper in her hands had sagged in her wilting grasp and her little smile for her love's endearing manner had had a growth spurt… and that the man was returning it, thinking it for him.

The smile died quickly, Mireille's throat clearing in its passing with a slightly embarrassed cough, and the blonde hurriedly shifted the newspaper higher over her countenance. She was sure the man would remember her, although not in a dangerous way… but in a way still unwelcome.

A rapidly escalating flurry of activity congregating around the front entrance grabbed Mireille's attention away from the grin of a stranger and put it back on track. They had arrived.

Like pigeons to scattered breadcrumbs the up until now loafing reporters flocked, erecting an effective screen on all sides of this morning's celebrities. Flagging journalists and photographers yet threw themselves into the jam, in futile hope of a breach that would get them closer to the quarry they unwittingly had in common with Noir.

The ball of people travelled with the Ishinomori procession, making it easy for Mireille to follow her enemies' progress across the foyer despite not actually laying eyes on them. The latter handicap changed when the mob bumped into the security checkpoint policing the courtroom traffic. Faces as foreign as her own began to emerge as the crowd was siphoned into single files, a fact Mireille found novel although she had no reason to suspect a full Japanese entourage was attached to Kaede Ishinomori after seeing Breffort's newspaper clippings and surveillance photos. It was a little difficult not to automatically have kinship toward the women sharing her central facial characteristics while herself a stranger to the nation, but the impulse passed swiftly. At the end of the day it would simply make them stand out as clearly as she did.

While not everyone next to Kaede was from overseas, they did have the same dress sense. Black was in vogue, the Soldats rebels not so separated from their forebear that they had discovered colour. The suits were crisp and the sunglasses smart, but goons were still goons. It was hard to think of any of them as Altena's 'priestesses'-or whatever station had been theirs in the woman's cult-however a finely tailored suit was a far cry from pseudo-religious robes and habits.

The face of Kaede Ishinomori finally surfaced in the centre of the little revolutionaries, one of the older priestesses-if they could still be called that-bent at her ear. The young woman hadn't branched out her wardrobe since Mireille had seen her pictures in Breffort's office, emulating her splintered Soldats bodyguard outfits closely. In person Kaede Ishinomori didn't look like much; not that much more than a girl somehow with too much power at her fingertips... if it were true. She had time in the yakuza under her belt, but any dregs were labelling themselves gangster these days. Mireille wondered what influence she did have in the mutiny, or if Altena's former circle allowed her any. Having a dead mother as a member could only go so far, and Altena had always enjoyed wielding power through others. Her disciples were likely the same.

Mireille couldn't see Kaede's brother or the man he travelled with in the wholly feminine melange-strange that they wouldn't be here, especially Ryosuke when his sibling had a day in court. It was slightly perturbing-the blonde assassin considered whether the pair was hanging back somewhere out of sight…. It made Mireille's skin itch, like their predatory eyes were inexplicably on her all of sudden, waiting for their chance to surprise her. She shook it off quickly, however the wariness stayed. There was no need to be too relaxed.

Slaying Kaede Ishinomori should be suitable show of Noir's 'loyalties' toward Soldats if Ryosuke and Vincent didn't crop up before the hit, but Mireille disliked leaving loose ends. There was vengeance to consider, and she really didn't want either of the men knocking on her door with a barrage of bullets back in Paris one day in the future. The possibility of planning a second assignment in Japan targeting Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu was odious, but it was a thought for a later time.

Mireille almost overlooked the downcast young woman trailing at the edges of Kaede's party. At first Mireille had thought she was an impatient bystander who had somehow elbowed her way into the party's rear and had been on the verge of dismissing her, except it quickly occurred to the assassin that the priestesses weren't moving to restrain her. No guard was that lax, however the woman looked very out of place amid her companions. She was in a world all of her own; even from Mireille's outlying location she could sense the distance within her. Ironically the discouraged young woman was dressed the most upbeat amid the prevalent darker tones; a green dress and white shawl, and a white sunhat she held in her hands in front of her. Whoever she was, she was definitely with Ishinomori after further observation, moving in synch with the group and being waved through the security checkpoint without pause.

Mireille's analytical mind wheeled into motion, digesting with the vivaciousness of a ravenous lion what she had witnessed. The police at the checkpoint had to be paid off to sanction the high profile defendant's and her gang's unrestrained access. The metal detector portal's warning beeps sounded out unheeded with each Soldats rebel it admitted, and none of the briefcases some of the priestesses carried were subjected to the x-ray machine. It appeared security wouldn't be weeding out the armed members of Kaede Ishinomori's party. It was not a setback-it simply meant the mission wouldn't be a pure pushover. Indeed, Mireille had figured at least one or two of Kaede's bodyguards would manage to smuggle a firearm into the courtroom. The new circumstances wouldn't cause a hitch in the blonde assassin's plans… but she was going to change them nonetheless.

Still as smooth and composed as she had been since she sat down, Mireille folded her newspaper and put it under her arm, uncrossed her legs, and got to her feet. The man who had been staring at her had twisted himself in his seat on the other sofa to instead stare over the back of it, eating up the hubbub taking place in the lobby which was evidently a better dish to him than an unreceptive though beautiful Western woman. There was no complaint from Mireille; she welcomed being ignored. It was what she wanted.

She repaid his disregard by quietly and unobtrusively leaving his company whilst availing herself of his coat draped over the sofa, sweeping it up as she passed without missing a beat. Mireille held it slung over her left arm at her hip as she continued her stride; the newspaper under her right a screen for the other arm's doing; and moved through the man's blind spots until the heaving crowd clustered in the centre of the foyer eliminated all hope of him detecting her and his loss. Though, if Mireille had underestimated the man's alertness, she was confident she could shake off his pursuit in the crowd. An untrained civilian was simple to mislead and elude. Mireille wouldn't be seeing the man again.

Mireille nudged, sidestepped, and sneaked a clear route to the security checkpoint.

The newspaper found itself tumbling into a trashcan on the way, and Mireille's admirer's coat became hers when she threw it on soon afterwards. It was large for her slender frame, but it would serve its purpose. As the metal detector gateways and x-ray conveyers loomed close, Mireille slapped on her sunglasses and buttoned the coat over the lavender shades of her suit. Her normal fashion sense would not help her here, but thanks to a little good fortune there was still opportunity to be had. She was deviating from what she and Kirika had sombrely planned yesterday, but sticking to a plan no matter what was for mechanical grunts lacking initiative, lacking enterprise; willing to face defeat for peace of mind. Knowing when to adapt was for leaders. The move came with risk, yet so did what the original plan specified. What wasn't a gamble on an assignment? Your life was the wager throughout. This was the better path, with the better odds. Mireille didn't hesitate.

Kirika was no doubt making her own move now too, proactively searching for 'aid' if an empathic passerby or policeman hadn't 'come to her rescue' beforehand. Mireille dared not seek her out with her gaze at this late juncture, irrespective of how affectionate she might ultimately feel. The time for emotions was over; in truth the blonde was meant to have left them at the Yuumura house.

Mireille slotted herself metres behind the Ishinomori party, putting some people between them and her-not too close, not too far; merely a tardy bodyguard or rear watch. Her foreign looks were actually helping her fit in for once.

In the minutes Mireille had to wait in the queue it felt like time was in no hurry to go by, but the assassin didn't sweat the delay. When trying to blend, your will had to be in it; appear like you were out of place, and people would think you were. You had to be bold, you had to be calm. Blown cover typically entailed a drastic, and violent, aftermath.

The final genuine member of Kaede Ishinomori's entourage trickled out of the lobby to join her comrades on the other side of the security checkpoint, none the wiser of the extra member at their heels. It was Mireille's turn to leave and for her disguise to be tested.

Armed with the haughty carriage exuded by the preceding priestess and more entrancing grace in her swaying hips, Mireille sailed through the chirping metal detector as soon as her path to it was clear of other visitors. In her peripheral vision she saw police officers look at her, but none stepped out to challenge her. They had indeed been compensated well, and had respect for their bribers-too much. Fear of possibly impeding one of them kept their hands in their money-lined pockets and let a lion through the door. Mireille suspected almost any foreign woman in black would have gotten through the checkpoint unopposed this morning.

It was over in seconds, but every one of those seconds had belonged to her. Cowed officers perhaps, but to them Mireille had been one of Ishinomori's bodyguard. She was inside clean.

That was not to say her guard was lowered, but her cover was cast off; there was no need for it past the checkpoint, and it wouldn't hold up under the scrutiny of real priestesses. Mireille was simply a visitor of some sort now, one of many.

The quantity of people on the other side of the checkpoint had been watered down compared to that in the nearby foyer, but there was still ample to brush shoulders with in the narrower halls. Kaede's group had gained some distance on the blonde assassin whilst she was slowed in the security line, but it was of no consequence. Mireille knew without a doubt where they were going.

The priestesses weren't all with Kaede. The surveying eyes skewered Mireille, and a lesser person would have been impaled to the floor and held fast. Kaede had left a rearguard just past the checkpoint, the *true* rearguard Mireille had imitated. Somehow Mireille had wandered into her watch, and for some reason had not wandered unnoticed through it. The priestess had been with Altena before all this-did she recognise Mireille? Did she know her face? Did she know Noir?

Mireille didn't freeze, tense up, or so much as glance sidelong in the priestess's direction; but continued on, calmly, maintaining her composure that had seen her through security. If the blonde reacted negatively it would all but confirm her as a threat in the rearguard's eyes; that she had something to hide, a cause to fret over the woman's study. There was still the prospect of easing out and manoeuvring free of that skewer.

Mireille's pace didn't quicken, but she did hunt for the thicker tufts of people to walk through to foil the priestess's easy observation of her. If there was any reservation regarding her identity or the danger she posed in the Soldats rebel's mind, Mireille wanted to stoke it, and keep stoking it until she decided the blonde wasn't worth the trouble, and was written off as *probably* harmless. Pulling the priestess's eyes further and further from her post as Mireille walked down the hall would increase the pressure, forcing the guard to choose between remaining on watch there or abandoning her position to tail and eventually confront the other woman. It was the priestess's frustration that was Mireille's true ally here; they were the coals for the fire of uncertainty she was brewing; and she did everything she could to raise it while sticking to her indifferent façade.

A glance with just a turn of her eyes rather than her head into the shiny skin of a trashcan depicted a distorted dark shape advancing behind Mireille amid the benign lights of bystanders, the menacing blob stretched up and down the curved silver like a monster's sinister shadow. The priestess's dedication to duty was stauncher than the cops'. Mireille wasn't really surprised; she was reminded of Altena's followers' suicidal zeal when she and Kirika faced them and their mistress down in the Manor. The blonde had hoped of course that perhaps with the loss of their leader the bulk of their fanaticism had been stripped away in the demise, but this priestess had enough left in her to hound the slowly and discreetly retreating assassin. Or the priestess did indeed know at least one face of Noir. There would be no rid of her hunt if that were the case, and a virtual guarantee she'd report the sighting to her allies. But the priestess, for now, followed where Mireille led… and where Mireille walked death awaited.

A sign ahead pointed down a corridor, the writing gibberish but the pictograph indicating restroom facilities. Mireille had been expecting it, the buildings blueprints still laid out in her head. She took a right into the corridor, and she wasn't far along it before she sensed the priestess walking it with her. The corridor provided a means to the restrooms and to a couple of the building's service entrances for maintenance crews, leaving it much less travelled, although the noise from the lobby and the wider hallways to the courtrooms still easily found a way in. Mireille may not have been able to hear the priestess's footsteps over the drone, but she could feel the woman at her back. It was instinct honed through years of service on the black path; always active, always right-well, right most of the time to have Mireille still breathing.

Mireille pushed open the door to the female restroom and, without breaking her stride, quickly took stock of it while the door swung shut behind her, separating her from the priestess for now. It wasn't empty as the assassin would have liked, but that would have been asking for too much. One of the three standard stalls was occupied-the one in the middle-and the disabled toilet was free. Not alone, Mireille needed to kill time before she could the priestess.

The blonde slipped into a stall and shut and locked the door just as she heard the restroom door creak open. It was almost silent here but for the dripping of a leaky tap bouncing off the tiled walls and floor. The priestess's heels echoed soundly as she arrived; and then louder, marking her path nearer the toilets. They stopped abruptly however, then started more softly and sporadically as she seemed to pace, waiting for Mireille to finish her business inside the stall… whichever stall that was. With now two of the stalls occupied, it afforded the assassin the delay she sought. Unless the Soldats rebel wanted to chance harassing an innocent civilian by kicking down the cubicle doors, her hands, or in this case her feet, were tied. Involving bystanders on the black path was more often than not a loathe scenario-their reactions were unpredictable and their tongues loose. You killed them when there was no other choice, and with cold immediacy. Their life was worth less than yours-everyone's was. Or almost everyone's.

The commode in the stall neighbouring Mireille's flushed, and shortly after its lock clicked open and a new set of footsteps took up the beat the priestess's had started. Mireille heard a squeak, and the sound of running water the flushed toilet had begun completely filled the restroom. The only woman that wasn't armed was at a sink, putting her back to the toilet cubicles. Time had been slain.

Mireille eased open the lock on her stall door as swiftly as she could manage, the rushing water resounding obliterating the solid click. She opened the door a tiny fraction and peeked through the slit. Her pistol was in her hand.

The other woman walking out of her stall had snatched the priestess's attention, if only for that fleeting moment. But it was all the opening Mireille needed. The black-clad woman was already turning back to the cubicle where she knew Mireille must be, however that shred of distraction had her flat-footed when the assassin shot out of the stall and jammed her weapon's silencer in her ribs. Mireille's left arm smacked into the Soldats mutineer's throat as she slung the limb around her neck and locked the Ishinomori guard in place in front of the gun's barrel. The blonde then pulled her arm back fiercely, constraining her prey to arch her body awkwardly and throw herself off-balance indefinitely. With the woman's head craned back it brought her ear to Mireille's mouth. "Silence," the assassin whispered. Mireille had her.

The squeak of the sink faucet and the halt of one source of running water robbed Mireille of the rest of her moment of professional satisfaction. The woman at the basin turned to presumably go to the hand dryer, but the shocking sight of the blonde death dealer and her pinned captive jolted the civilian to a dead stop.

Mireille didn't want to have to control *two* prisoners, and quickly seized hold of the situation before it became a *situation*. Adopting one of her most charming but largely seductive smiles of her vast repertoire, Mireille nuzzled the Soldats guard's ear and kissed her neck with all familiarity of an old lover, capping it off with a teasing wink that promised more to come at the dumbfounded woman looking on. The Corsican could feel the priestess tense in her grasp and heard the intake of air as indignant protests amassed in her throat-or was it a gasp of enjoyment…?-however the merciless grinding of the Walther P99 in her kidney saw any response from Mireille's hostage short-lived.

The hasty ruse had the desired affect-the civilian's senses returned to her at the Sapphic spectacle and she smiled weakly, before all but jogging to the restroom's exit, hurriedly wiping her wet hands on her skirt as she fled. Mireille couldn't help a genuine grin.

Mireille ushered the tottering priestess toward the disabled toilet; half-pulling, half-dragging her into the spacious stall. The faint crackle of a radio sparking to life gave pause to the assassin, and she listening intently to the German whisper. "Gisela-come back."

The fingers of Mireille's free hand reached up and tucked the guardswoman's fair hair behind her ear, baring the murmuring earpiece. German was once more broadcast softly into the again quiet restroom-"Gisela, do you read? Do you have anything to report? Come back."

"The…" Gisela's voice was hoarse-as well it should be since Mireille had ordered silence from her-and she spoke in German like the broadcaster. "The microphone is in my left sleeve. Do you… do you understand?"

Mireille said nothing. Then in the silence, a muffled snap immediately followed by a wet thud. The priestess gasped, and there was no mistaking what sort of gasp it was this time. Mireille pushed her buckling body over the toilet, Gisela's stomach finding the seat first, and aimed her pistol at the back of the dying woman's head. A second and another gunshot later, and Gisela was just plain dead.

Mireille holstered her weapon and bent over the corpse, looking for that microphone. The Corsican had weighed whether she ought to let her prisoner give the all clear to her colleague, but she simply hadn't trusted Gisela to blurt a warning despite the sure death that would ensue. Self-preservation had been second to duty under Altena's leadership.

Mireille lifted Gisela's limp wrist with the microphone set against what used to be a pulse point to her lips. She flushed the stall's toilet, and, recalling her victim's Germanic voice, gave the all clear to whoever was listening on the frequency, the combination of the blonde's mimicking of Gisela and the interference from the nearby flushing toilet hopefully passing the assassin off as the dead guard merely on a bathroom break. It seemed to work-the radio fell quiet after an acknowledgement.

Mireille nudged the stall door closed with her hand and locked it in case of some random bathroom-goer stumbling upon her, and then went about the somewhat grisly task of stripping off the radio and microphone lashed around Gisela's carcass for her own eavesdropping purposes.

In rummaging through Gisela's person to detach the radio and mic, Mireille discovered a handgun harness containing a Glock 18 machine pistol and a few extended magazines, and what the blonde guessed was a backup firearm; a stubbier Glock 26; at the small of the priestess's back. It provided Mireille some idea of the hardware she and Kirika would be up against if most or all the guards were equipped thus, and the Corsican contract killer made mental note of the intel.

It wasn't until Mireille had fitted the Soldats' radio on her body and was propping up Gisela on the toilet in a pantomime of use that she noticed the very familiar silver symbol on the lapel of the woman's suit jacket. Almost without thinking Mireille picked it off the black fabric, staring at it as she brought it closer to her eye. She had seen the emblem nearly all the years of her life on the pocketwatch her father had owned, and again on the face of the book called Langonel's Manuscript. Soldats… but more accurately, *Noir*. Two women wielding swords before one another, dressed in robes. Altena's Noir existed only in metal. And it was principally just a symbol of the Soldats splinter group now, the badge of the old.

Mireille kept the pin, thinking it might come in handy, and arranged Gisela's droopy feet flat on the floor to appear normal to anyone who might peek under the cubicle's door. It simply took a hundred yen coin to turn the straightforward lock to 'occupied' status once outside the stall-the morbid fact that the guardswoman was dead probably wouldn't be realised for hours.

Mireille washed her hands and ensured she was as presentable as always in the restroom mirror; blood had a tendency to splatter on you at close range. However it looked as if Gisela's gore had only stained the toilet and porcelain tiles; Mireille was spotless.

She took off the stolen overcoat and smoothed any dishevelment from her infinitely more attractive suit. Laying the coat over her arm, Mireille smiled briefly at the attractive and bright face in the mirror and left the restroom. She hoped Kirika hadn't been waiting for her for long.

* * *

Kirika selected a spot on the Yokohama District Courthouse lobby floor and picked a staggered route through the other building's visitors toward it. When she reached it, she looked around the foyer from her new perspective for a while and at random picked another spot to mosey on to. Disorientation seemed to tag along wherever she drifted, and her mystified expression showed she knew of her travel companion.

But on the inside Kirika was something else, something much deeper than the lost girl she played. She'd had training for this kind of deception; at least that was what the phantom images from her shattered memory suggested; and her life before had all but consisted of pretending to be something she wasn't. It was a technique of an assassin, hiding in plain sight, a subterfuge that led to the kill, and Kirika was all about killing today. For Mireille who she loved, and for the blood price that had to be paid for their freedom.

If Kirika had a preference, she liked pure stealth more than trying to blend into a crowd of people. Sneaking around, working quietly in the shadows, not being seen at *all*… there was security in the dark anonymity, away from eyes. But Mireille was responsible for the planning of an assignment's operation, and the older assassin's typical predilection was to hide with the non-combatants when such were present in number within a target's general proximity. It was the wisest alternative for this mission being the safest and most auspicious means of entry and execution; however Kirika couldn't spin a tale and assume a role as smoothly as Mireille was able to. The blonde had been gifted with undeniable charm and the sweet tongue to match that Kirika knew the pleasant magnetism of intimately well. Mireille could ooze her beguiling wiles whenever she required-was it the look in her suddenly deep, endless gaze, or the perfect way she contorted her body to that of a master sculptor's life's work in flawless alabaster flesh, or was it the carefully picked words she crooned that went straight to your heart while airing out your head?-and they *made* you want to do everything in your power to accommodate her requests, just to see her pleased with you and your efforts. Or that was what Kirika felt when rushing to oblige her beloved blonde angel, anyway. It couldn't have been much different for other people trapped under Mireille's enamouring spell-Kirika had witnessed how they behaved. Even though those people had not been in love with the woman like she was, they had looked it in those moments.

A cover with a speaking part wasn't Kirika's strong suit when charm was a foreign trait to her that she had no hope of exuding herself, but fortunately her partner, the adept strategist, knew that. Mireille kept Kirika's disguises as light on the roleplay as feasible; they were generic backgrounds, positions in which people rarely had a reason to speak up much. The soft-spoken Kirika played those roles as though she lived them.

Mireille's plan for the Ishinomori hit had Kirika posing as a lost girl, somehow separated from her family already inside a courtroom. She was to find her way into a court police officer's custody and be escorted to the security room linking the lobby to the courtroom access hallways where she would await Mireille; acting as her guardian; to claim her. Then they would both leave the security room via the door to the courtroom areas, thereby circumventing the lobby's metal detector's and x-ray machines. The sly sidestep was the sticky part; if the officers in the security room were alert, it would occur to them that Mireille had come in from the lobby side and was leaving through the courtroom side. But if questioned, Kirika was confident that Mireille would convince the guards that it was alright to let them slip on through. In the event of such a failure that they were confined to the lobby, the contingency proposal was to strike at Ishinomori on the street as her and her group left the district court. That would be messy and the danger high, probably calling every member of Kaede's bodyguard she had in the region down on them and every police officer too, and out in the open, however in the chaos Kirika and Mireille's objectives could still be achieved. A panicked crowd immersed in bedlam tended to have poor memory recall after the fact, and neither Kirika nor Mireille were assassins who depended exclusively on the shadows to succeed. A heated shootout against multiple aggressors was usually the worst case scenario, but it was a scenario the young women had plenty of experience winning.

The throng in the lobby stirred up into a commotion, and Kirika knew its centre before it appeared. In the last seconds before the action really started she tried to find Mireille through the mob of gathering people, but the smitten girl had to settle for disappointment. For all Kirika knew her partner may already be on the move. She had better get a move on too.

Kirika made sure to get a glimpse of Kaede Ishinomori before stepping up her lost girl feign, just to be sure it was really the moment to put the mission into motion. A tiny fissure in the swarm and a fraction of a second was all that was needed; the assassin instantly mirrored the face of the white-haired woman smothered by bodyguards and reporters to the photographed individual's she had memorised in Breffort's office. Kirika tried not to think about her name and who she was too much; it made it easier to overlook that they had a past and a life and people who knew them; loved them even. That they had a future. *Had* a future.

[Taking lives is a sin, even their lives. But how terrible a sin, really? Is it murder to put down a rabid animal? Monsters-demons-forfeited the right to be regarded as people. Their future is another's pain. Put them down. Put them down.]

Kirika did her best to overlook Altena's whispering too.

Kaede Ishinomori was not alone of course, but Kirika didn't belabour sizing up her bodyguards either. The target had some; that was everything the girl needed to know. No matter whom they were, no matter how experienced or armed, the outcome would not change. If the women in black suits stood with their doomed charge when Kirika and Mireille descended, their fortunes were as promising as Kaede's.

Kirika's keen ears reached above the lobby's clamour to pick up the bang of a heavy door swinging shut on her other side of the room away from the crowd. The blueprints of the courthouse flared in her mind, and she homed in on the security access door on the distant foyer wall. A police officer briskly trotted across the lobby's floor in the wake of the door closing, a rolled up brown paper bag in one hand while the other struggled to pin a security swipe card to his belt. It didn't take the appraisal of a practiced assassin to tell that he was in a rush, the man needing several tries before he got the card securely fastened. His hat was on squint too, but it looked too big for his head to begin with, and his hair underneath was scruffy. He barely seemed to notice the furore in the middle of the lobby. The policeman's distraction was welcome for Kirika's objective.

Kirika set her meandering path of disorientation on an intersect course with the police officer's hurried jog. When the policeman looked up from adjusting his black tie, the teenager was there in front of him, her sudden appearance almost bowling him over. His shoes squeaked on the floor and his arms flailed as he battled to come to a halt, all but stooped over the shorter Kirika when he finally did.

"I'm lost," Kirika said simply, staring up at the man.

The policeman blinked at her for a moment while her words sunk in following his excitement beforehand. "Oh. Umm…" He glanced about fretfully, as though Kirika's guardian would be readily visible nearby, or that maybe someone else would be able to help her. "Did you… did you come here with family?"

Kirika nodded solemnly. She thought it funny how easily the lies came. None unsettled her.

The police officer sighed, scanning the lobby again, as if Kirika's missing family, now confirmed by the assassin to exist, truly would materialise from thin air somewhere close. But no such luck. That family would only show up when she wanted to.

"Okay, you better come with me," he admitted half-heartedly, however his supportive smile and kind eyes told that his lack of enthusiasm was reserved for Kirika being in a predicament, not for the girl herself.

Kirika trailed after the policeman, who had slowed his pace to normal after their meeting. When they reached the security office, he held the door open for her to pass by him and enter first.

The office was nothing particularly unique. It was an office host to desks and chairs and papers, although with the added exception of a security camera station housing multiple black and white monitors, and the occasional wall-mounted gun rack where pump-action shotguns were the sported arms. It was all quite orderly, documents stacked nicely and no loose ammunition lying around.

"Ah, so that's why you were late!" one of the two other officers in the security room smirked as the tardy policeman escorted Kirika to a chair in front of one of the desks, pulling the swivel chair out and gesturing for her to sit. "She's cute. Which high school?"

"Funny," Kirika's police officer said dully, sounding like he didn't think it was funny at all, whatever the joke was.

Once Kirika had taken her seat, the officer sat on the edge of the desk, his back to his workmates, and launched into his gentle interview of her.

"What's your name?" was the first question he asked as he took off his oversized hat and tossed it and the brown paper bag after that on the desk. It might have been his desk.

"Kirika Yuumura," Kirika said truthfully. Her name didn't exist anywhere except on the student card she carried; it was as good as an alias, as that was what it had once been. Her Tsubaki High School records had been no doubt expunged by Soldats, and everyone else who knew it was either dead or lived in darkness, out of reach of the law. Or was a high school student. However, Kirika didn't see herself living long in their memories. The policeman would forget it too before the day was out. When Kirika thought about it, it was only Mireille who uttered her name aloud. But for all that; she *was* Kirika Yuumura. Another name would be simple to conceive, but her real name, such that it was, mattered to her. When she could, Kirika shunned perverting her identity behind a false name. She would not lose this one.

The policeman continued his line of questioning. "Who were you here with?"

"My aunt," Kirika replied. A half-truth; Mireille was the only family she had, and their bond was thicker than blood and truer than name.

"And her family name is Yuumura too?" Kirika nodded, and the policeman jotted down the information on a notepad and then tore off the leaf. "Okay…" He hopped off the desk to his feet. "I'll get an announcement made over the PA system for your aunt to pay us a visit, and take a look around for her myself. You just sit tight, okay?"

The policeman put down the notepad and unrolled the top of the brown bag and stuck his hand inside, coming back out with a chocolate bar in his grip. "Here you go," he said, tendering it to Kirika.

Kirika regarded the chocolate bar listlessly, wondering if there was a risk or if the treat was as innocuous as it looked. There were many insidious poisons in the world, and when you had the knowledge of their effects it was challenging not to beware what food and drink strangers offered you of their own volition.

"Oh, are you allergic to nuts?" the policeman asked, for a second browsing the chocolate bar's packaging.

"Mm, mm," Kirika denied, shaking her head from side to side slightly. She took the bar from him and studied the bright yellow wrapper idly. She had a cover to maintain, after all.

The police officer smiled, obviously pleased that Kirika had accepted, and then left the office to alert the girl's 'aunt' of her 'niece's' whereabouts.

Kirika tore open the treat's wrapper and nibbled at the chocolaty outer shell. Meanwhile her gaze panned the room carefully, her indolent reddish-brown stare the thick coating masking the scrupulous scrutiny of a high-class assassin.

The chatty officer was at another desk, squeezing a small orange rubber ball in one hand while reading a piece of paper in the other, Kirika's presence apparently dismissed. The policeman who had remained silent was at the surveillance camera station, dividing his attention between the newspaper in his lap and the monitors, with the newspaper getting the bigger slice. A few seconds spent watching the neglected screens had Kirika up-to-date with Kaede Ishinomori's and her bodyguards' positions just outside the target's scheduled courtroom. Kirika hadn't seen Mireille in one of the black and white images, but then she hadn't actually presumed to. The blonde had a habit of unconsciously walking in a camera's blind spots when she knew where they were, even when they weren't on an assignment.

There wasn't a CCTV camera in the security room with Kirika, but the teenager didn't need the monitors to fathom that. The building's blueprints had pointed out the lack, and her survey of the room had validated them. Kirika could almost relax here in the den of law enforcement. She chewed on her chocolate bar, liking the taste and texture and wondering if Mireille would get her more. Mireille hardly ever ate chocolate, which more or less meant Kirika hardly ever ate it either. When the woman did though, the little prettily shaped chocolates she brought home were very rich and delicious and sometimes had creamy middles that mixed in Kirika's mouth with their chocolate casings so delightfully. But this chocolate bar was good too. It had a crunch to it and was fun to chew.

It was roughly ten minutes later with Kirika bent over at the waist in her chair, searching under the desk for a waste bin for her empty chocolate bar wrapper, when Mireille breezed into the office. She arrived by the other door into the security office, the one that led around the lobby's security checkpoint; for the police officers' convenience and queuing visitors' peace, Kirika imagined. It was a departure from what Kirika had expected, yet a gainful one. Mireille must have seen an opening to improve their plan. The black coat slung over her left arm had possibly eased that opening a little wider-she hadn't left the house with it.

"There you are!" Mireille exclaimed cheerily, making quick work of the space between herself and Kirika and stooping low to engulf the rather taken aback girl in a big warm hug where she sat. "I was worried. You shouldn't wander off like that."

"Mm…" was the entirety of Kirika's muttered answer as she meekly put her arms around Mireille. She found one half of her face squished against her partner's neck and shoulder, and all she could smell was the woman's strong perfume, and below that, a whiff of her natural scent. Some cover roles were nicer than others.

Through the one eye that wasn't forced shut because of the enthusiastic blonde's reunion with her 'niece', Kirika saw the helpful police officer loiter uncomfortably in the doorway, scratching an itch underneath his hat. "It, uh, was pure luck I bumped into your, your aunt…" he said clumsily. Luck had nothing to do with it, unless her name was Mireille. The policeman's gaze seemed to persist dragging toward Mireille's back then pull away violently, only to be dragged back again almost instantly. "I-I guess she's your aunt through marriage?"

Mireille loosed Kirika from her embrace as she straightened, however her hands slid up to remain on the younger girl's shoulders. "Of a sort," she said, a knowing smile blossoming for Kirika only. The blonde turned to the police officer. "I fancy 'big sister' to 'aunt', since I'm not *that* old, am I?" The charm was out to play.

"Oh, uh, no," the policeman stammered. "You are very… young." There was a guffaw from one of the two other officers behind Kirika, but whatever the joke it must have had meaning for him alone.

"Thank you for taking care of my niece," Mireille said, glossing over the man's clear-cut comment. The policeman started to mutter some sort of gauche reply, except the assassin didn't wait for it. "Oh, I found this coat unattended in the lobby," she said, lifting the coat on her arm as though she just remembered it was there. "Perhaps you have a lost and found?"

"Umm… um, yeah, let me take that for you," the policeman said, struggling somewhat to keep up.

Mireille handed the coat into the officer's care, and then bid Kirika to rise through a pointed look in her eyes and slight tilt of her head. "Thank you, again," she said to the policeman while putting an arm around Kirika's shoulders, grasping the left. Mireille didn't want to stick around for the man's goodbye, guiding Kirika to the door she had entered from.

"Bye, Kirika," the officer said to the teenager's departing back.

Kirika felt Mireille's arm tense around her, but her partner waited until they were in the hall before she spoke up. "You told him your name." It was a statement of fact, not an inquiry.

"Mm," Kirika acknowledged anyway.

"I suppose there's no real harm…" Mireille admitted, but one glance at her serious expression and Kirika could see the wheels in her head turning, divining how her partner revealing her name could threaten their anonymity in the future. But the wheels didn't turn for long with so negligible a thing to power them. Ahead of the misgiving about to set in Kirika anyway, the girl's shoulder was squeezed tenderly and her petite body coaxed close to her love's, for her to bask against for an idyllic, too short, instance before Mireille's necessary separation. They had been niece and aunt in the lobby and security room, but here beyond those places they were strangers. Kirika could yet feel Mireille's warmth touching her side; she would have to savour that flicker of heavenly sensation until what they had come here to achieve was through.

"I have one of their radios," Mireille said while she and Kirika walked with each other down the hall, mingling amongst the other suits, the distance between the two assassins gradually growing.

Kirika said nothing. She didn't need the details, though she could envision them. She doubted one of Ishinomori's escort would have given the hardware up willingly. The radio would help to tell them *exactly* when Kaede Ishinomori was leaving her courtroom, and what route she was taking out of the building. It took the spying and guesswork out of the equation, replacing it with coordination and pinpoint accuracy. Kirika would have to stay in eyeshot of Mireille to recognise when to move, however having to hold her attention on the blonde was definitely a perk of the job.

The intersection looming harked back to the young women's predestined separation; one hall for Kirika and one for Mireille. The black thread tying them together would bring both back as a whole when the moment was ripe, and the lives caught between the pair at that instant would be smothered by the darkness that coloured the string. Kirika and Mireille separated as lovers, but they would reunite as killers. Today, it was the way it had to be.

* * *

"Case dismissed!"

The judge's gavel rapped, and immediately the uproar, held in so long by those observing in the gallery, was unleashed. Some of the prosecution stood up to shout protests above the din behind them-mistrial, perversion of justice, and that rot-but the smarter ones realised total defeat when they saw it and wallowed in their failure. With no witnesses the prosecution's case had been based on circumstantial evidence-Yolanda, Uzumi, Karen and Fatima; the team of lawyers defending Kaede and fellow sisters themselves; hadn't broken a legal sweat. But Kaede herself had seen to her own defence with a more hands-on approach days earlier; the prosecution's sole witness, Aki Matsumoto, a nothing factory worker turned whistleblower whose conscience had led him fatally astray, was in little pieces of meat dumped in Tokyo Bay. Digested meat, by now. The family that survived him had been suitably compensated for their loss… and cooperation. Aki Matsumoto's life had been worth a surprisingly low sum to his wife and child all told.

Dominique ran the gamut of the media gauntlet that was seconds prior a well-behaved courtroom gallery in company with Kaede and her bodyguard-oh, and her little pet; she was so very easy to overlook-microphones waved in her face and camera flashes shocked her eyes, all throughout the jumbled questions and requests for comments assailing her ears. The lawyers would fend off the rabble with their garrulous statements and diplomatic responses of how unshakable their confidence had been in Kaede Ishinomori being found innocent of the crimes laid against her, once they had all vacated to the halls outside the courtroom. And while they wooed the crowd with their effusive showmanship and inspiring poise, the celebrity of the morning and her escort would quietly slip out the back.

"Pfft, look at this lot. Makes you think they were expecting a conviction, or an escape attempt, or *something* more exciting than an acquittal. Worse, there's not a looker among them!"

Vincent's pointless prattle was what scathed Dominique's ears the worst. His unrelenting idiocy even had him trying to fight the clamour with a loud voice so everyone, Dominique, Kaede et all-maybe he even wanted the members of the gallery included in his insight too-could hear his inane observations, as if they held something redeemable. He'd even talked during the actual trial, whispering dry comments of questionable wit at every opportunity. Why was Vincent even here? He should be wherever Ryosuke was-out of Dominique's hair.

"When I start eyeing you women-in-black that's when you know it's bad."

Behind the dark lenses of their sunspecs longsuffering glances were exchanged between sisters, and Dominique was positive more than one sigh was heaved. How… how this, *this* man, was purportedly a ladykiller, the French woman would never comprehend. She supposed she had to concede that he was beautiful, though in a feminine vein that she had difficultly believing attracted women favouring men. But it was his personality. Vincent's personality was absolutely ignoble, intolerable, and insulting to the women he would later bed, or attempt to, while downright cruel to his rejects. A well, if luridly, dressed and pretty caveman was all he was. Dominique hoped she would be compensated for accommodating Ryosuke's long-time partner; that when he eventually fell in the war against Soldats-and he *would*, she would make it so-his abilities had furthered her and her sisters' struggle in some grand manner beforehand. Though, when suffering in his repugnant presence, she did feel that an unremarkable and abrupt death would be satisfactory enough.

More reporters waited to ambush Dominique and her charge in the hall, jockeying for a coveted position at the front of the pack that the bodyguards kept at arm's length with their foreboding manner and looks. Yolanda and the other solicitors flitted past the shoulders of their martially inclined peers to wrestle the crowd into a loose civil passivity using their verbal arsenal and presence of a dissimilar but no less intimidating sort of their own. What the legal team said never touched Dominique's ears for longer than a handful of seconds; while the four corralled the commotion into a measure of calm, their leader; the girl the gathered journalists *really* wanted to talk to; and her left over retinue, vanished into the corridors of Yokohama District Courthouse. Though their methods differed, the lawyers were as much the rearguard as their sisters equipped with firearms and left behind to support them were.

Their company smaller, it was tantamount to strolling inside the walls of Ishinomori Tower for Dominique and Kaede as they travelled through the halls swiftly and without attracting too much interest, on route toward an isolated alleyway emergency exit, unlocked and the connected alarm deactivated prior to their arrival at the building. The route was told to be a seldom trafficked one by visitors and courthouse staff alike, and thus far lived up to its repute. Sisters awaited them at the commandeered emergency exit to link up with and lead them to the motorcade, and then it was a short ride home in the limo while one car stayed behind to wait for the sisters still in the building. The thought of Kaede in the limousine again, even outfitted as it was, dried Dominique's throat, but she was conscious that it was an illogical response, governed by emotion… and the past. Nothing would happen, she told herself. However, deep down, the woman was ready if something did.

Dominique smiled a little tremulously down at Kaede, but stiffened her lips before the girl saw it and beamed brilliantly in return. Vincent grinned back at her too, the lout. Dominique didn't like him walking so near to Kaede. The child shared her mother's taste in companionship, but still… Dominique didn't like it. Vincent was certainly an awful character and the French woman would have hated if her charge picked up any of his dreadful attitude, but there were also dangers everywhere, even from within the rebellion. His association with Ryosuke was one thing, but at the core Dominique viewed Vincent Hsu as an outsider. He wasn't a sister, he wasn't Ishinomori family; he was analogous to the ragtag bunch that blindly followed Ryosuke, and yet, not one of them either. She knew his background, his life preceding Japan, yet wherever Dominique saw Vincent, she saw suspicion as well. She did not want him befriending Kaede like he had Ryosuke. Dominique would not lose Kaede to anything… or anyone.

"Cristina here… You can't raise her? All this time? Could be a malfunction; there's thick concrete in some sections. Send a runner to check on-" Radio chatter. After being around it so long, Dominique was accustomed to tuning out the bandied words of varying languages. The sisters trained in arms and military tactics were disciplined, especially those taking care of Kaede, but even they gossiped on the radio frequencies like it was a phone line now and then.

"…Check the bathrooms if she isn't there… Yes, I know she isn't the type…."

Kaede had been discharged quickly without a fuss, much less a conviction; Yolanda, Uzumi and the rest had performed a job well done waylaying the media hounds; and everything remaining was progressing along according to schedule-just the way Dominique liked it. There was a satisfaction gained when events unfolded as you predicted; rather, engineered them to be. It was akin to knowing the future, precognition, like watching a machine in motion and understanding that motion, each cog and spring doing exactly what it was meant to together in sequence-a triumph of logic, perfect in its-

Dominique heard the footsteps before the woman strode out from the corner ahead. She could hear the purpose in each resounding hard click, and then saw it in her stride. The woman was a foreigner, at least a foreigner in the provisos of this country; blonde hair and blue eyes and fair features. Beautiful. She was well-dressed in a suit and skirt, if a tad flashy in her chosen lilac shade, and her hair was done up in an adventurous twist. There was something… something in her face….

The woman reached behind her head as she turned on her heel to face Dominique and those with her, releasing her long tresses to fall about her shoulders. She shook out her mane, tossing her head gently from side to side, and stood there in Dominique and Kaede's path-in everyone's path. Her expression was blank, cool nothingness, yet there some *something*… *something* about it….

A memory was pulled grudgingly out of dust and cobwebs; all but dust and cobwebs itself; a flake of recall. The time and the place came slowly, made nebulous by age. It was years ago, the place… warm, sunny. The Mediterranean. There was a child; a girl. An important girl. Dominique had seen her only then, and only from a distance. It was during her sojourn in the personal service of Altena, when she had lived and worked humbly at the Manor as a robed and pious sister; not that she was any less devout now. Dominique had been much younger then; Altena too, but still wise and carrying her force of presence that would only grow stronger with the years. And the child had been a child, young and innocent, a native to the island-yes, it had been an island…-and pretty, with blonde hair and blue… blue eyes….

"No…!" someone gasped, barely a voice powering the word.

A muted spit, another and another and another, and then thunderous bangs erupted behind her, tearing into reality and literally jolting Dominique from her astonishment. But as rational thought kick started, so did terror spawn to subvert it. The screams, the shouts around her, the-the gunfire! Gunfire everywhere, driving her deaf; hammer's blows against her eardrums, and hammered nails in some unfortunate's coffin. She remembered it. The aggression of it. The *violence* of it, so ferocious and frank that it could only be reality despite your mind's fraught refusal it was happening. The chaos. The blood and death. Dominique remembered it all.

Her body did as well. She ducked down, sitting on her heels, head covered-cowering. Instinct. All the instances she mourned the past, wished for a chance to go back and do it differently somehow, do it better; all the vows of readiness for this, *this* which was taking place right now. Dominique had been deluding herself. She reacted like anyone would. She reacted like she had back then. She froze. She cowered.

There was an explosion, a boom not of gunpowder, then a hissing like a snake, and thick vapour surged over her, about her; breathed by the serpent-a poisonous serpent. Gas! They were using gas! Dominique's shuddering hand somehow made it to her mouth, although what little logic her mind yet commanded exclaimed that the gesture was senseless.

Something heavy smacked against Dominique's back, splaying her out on the floor. Her chin hit tile, and her glasses bounced off her nose to crack in front of her face. There were bodies with her on the floor, mercifully blurred, but myopia couldn't censor the red pools and spatters on the while tiles near them. God. No. No, it could *not* be. How could the old fossils send them? They were…! They were… *gone*! Broken off from Soldats! They…! Dominique could scarcely *think* the word, but it was there, laced with her fright where it rightly belonged. The Black Hands, *here*! Their swords against *her*! Against…! Oh god, *Kaede*!

Terror of a dissimilar sort, arguably more potent than the first, gripped Dominique, and she whirled her head around to find Kaede, fervently praying she wasn't one of the slumped black shapes. Her weak, squinted vision located Fumiko first, the green dress an unmistakable tip off. The girl was like Dominique had been seconds before, crouched in a ball, but with her eyes shut and her hands over her ears. It could have been attributable to Dominique's strained eyesight, but Fumiko's face looked disturbingly impassive-the French woman was certain she didn't even flinch as blood splattered across her right cheek.

Kaede was close, being restrained by Vincent of all people. Both were kneeling on the floor, the child fighting in Vincent's clutches feverishly, clawing at his arm across her chest.

"My katana!" Kaede shrieked, ceasing her clawing for a moment to thrust her hand at the air, reaching for the sword that wasn't there. "Who has my katana? Give it to me! *Give* it to me!"

"No one has it! You left it at home, you ditz!" Vincent barked above the gunshots and yells. He was searching the floor for something, pawing at it with his available hand while simultaneously scuffling with the thrashing Kaede. He obtained what he was looking for-a pistol looted from one of Dominique's fallen brethren. "Your brother's coming, okay? Stay still and wait for him!" He let Kaede off his leash with a shove, his sneer symptomatic of his brusque dismissal if his tone and push weren't enough.

Vincent hurriedly ejected the magazine of the stolen gun, inspected it with a glance, and then slapped it back inside. He went to cock the weapon when all of sudden he happened to look up, catching Dominique's scrutiny from where she was prone, pinned to the floor by what she regrettably knew had to be a dead sister. Vincent did no more than watch her in her grisly predicament, tapping the pistol's barrel against his leg as seconds and bullets passed, seeming one in the same to him. There was obvious mocking in his look, but there was something predatory too. Dominique had the uneasy impression of what a lame wolf would feel like being sized up by the more able of the pack. She started to writhe under the body and strive to get a hold of her glasses-or a gun.

Vincent flashed Dominique a lopsided grin, gritted teeth behind it. He cocked the pistol in his hands roughly. Dominique abandoned her spectacles for a gun. There was blood on her palms and in between her fingers, wet and sticky; her sisters' blood; but had no weapon to show for the macabre hunt. Kaede had quietened down, panting violently like a feral animal, seething. She mumbled spite and lunacy; chilling atrocities after each hard breath, however she was berserk in her head only; she was in the eye of the coordinated attack and ragged, faltering defence, but she was not a part of the fracas. There would be no aid from the child; she was as shut off as Fumiko. Dominique needed that gun.

"Time to do my thing," Vincent said through his teeth. He bolted into the grey smog which didn't seem to be gas after all, body hunched and pistol raised, back the way he and Dominique had come. The distinctive pitch of unrestrained gunfire that had been lacking began anew in a rapid barrage. Awful man.

Vincent had the right of it, though. It pained Dominique to have been shown by *him*, but shamed her more. Leaders had to fight sometimes too, and she had more reason to than anyone. It was not just her life.

Dominique winced and grunted as she heaved her stricken comrade off her. She retrieved her broken glasses, and with them found a gun. They were Noir, but while she prayed for deliverance, Dominique knew that at least one angel was listening.

* * *

Kirika listened at the edge of the stairwell on the floor below for the parade of footsteps that would come overhead. It was silent and empty; they would not know she lurked underneath. She rested against a wall, patient as a spider on its web, her pistol already in her hands, though concealed behind her back should someone wander out this way. The teenager could understand why Kaede Ishinomori had picked this remote route for extraction from the courthouse, but as a price for the infinite potential hazards and hindrances avoided by forgoing a public exit, they had honed the deadlier threats left over. Kirika surmised that Ishinomori's bodyguards thought that the residual dangers would be easier to detect and combat in the open, lonely halls. However, in the isolated corridors they were equally cut off. They would not see the threat to detect it beforehand, and when it was time to combat it… it would be hopeless.

There weren't any security cameras around here; well, too few and far between in this section to worry over. Reinforcements for Ishinomori's retinue were some minutes away, as were the municipal building's police officer contingent. They would turn up eventually, inevitably, but Kirika and Mireille would have finished with time to spare before then. They would rescue corpses, arrest no one. They were lucky. They would live through today.

There was a rattle on the web; many footsteps tramping above. Like the spider, Kirika waited while they tangled themselves completely in the invisible threads. This was a web weaved by two spiders, and it was the second who would reveal to their prey how black the spun silk they had walked into was.

The marching stopped. Kirika broke into action, stealing up the stairs as fleet of foot as though she really did have eight nimble legs. She leaned out from around the corner at the top of the stairwell, sighting the target and her escort. The all-female bodyguard protected Kaede ably-Kirika had no shot at the lead Soldats' agitator. It would have been nice to have ended it quickly, and with fewer deaths. Then again, the women had all seen Mireille's face; the blonde wouldn't have been satisfied until it was the last thing each of them saw.

Although Mireille met Ishinomori's group, it was Kirika who dealt the first bite. They never saw it coming, too captivated by Mireille; their backs to Kirika. Dying with the woman's beauty as the final image in your eyes wasn't such a bad fate when Kirika considered it.

Kirika shot the nearest bodyguard in the back of the head. She crumpled instantly. The assassin's follow up shot took another in the temple as the woman turned, knocking her off her feet. The third gunshot of the opening volley pierced the breast of a yet another. She collapsed into her friends, sliding onto her rear and then toppling over onto her side.

Kirika ducked back behind the wall as she received heavy fire in answer to her ambush. She had done as much damage as she could in those scant seconds of surprise, eliminating approximately a third of the enemy's strength. Mireille had exacted her own toll too before retreating to shelter in a neighbouring hallway, but there was still the primary target-and those standing in the way of her.

Kirika's back slid down the wall, the assassin lowering into a crouch. Bits of cracked and chipped plaster flew overhead, powder plumes bursting in the aftermath of their launch. The bullets pounding the wall around the corner weren't enough to suppress her.

The girl's back spun away from the wall, her body rotating to poke her head and arm and pistol outside the edge of her cover. There was no one down here but the last guard she had shot, lying on her side, bloodying her white shirt red while drunkenly and lethargically squeezing the trigger of her handgun in Kirika's general vicinity, each shot wilder than the one preceding it. Blood dribbled from between her lips, but Kirika put another bullet in her chest regardless. The guard might have gotten a lucky hit.

Kirika emptied the rest of her magazine into two other bodyguards too intent on above to remember below; two rounds in one woman's sternum and the final slug in another woman's stomach before dipping behind the wall again. She made a mental note that the latter guard might linger with the stomach wound and to not discount her. The assassin swapped her depleted clip for a fresh one, and stood up. The little crouching trick wouldn't work as well again, but the guards still had to reload sometime.

Their initial panic subsiding, Kirika could tell that the black-clad bodyguards were good, better than the average mercenary and underworld criminal. They outshined their male counterparts Soldats had sent after her and Mireille also. These women were like the priestesses Kirika and Mireille had fought in the Manor, women who had admired Altena and who had devoted themselves, life and all, to Le Grand Retour. Like it was a religion itself, Mireille had once said. Women like these, dressed in robes and habits, had trained Kirika into what she was.

[Thank them for it. Show them how much you have learned, what a *good* student you were…]

Kirika ignored the grim voice, but demonstrated her talent nonetheless on her former teachers. The priestesses' own elite abilities counted for little in the exposed position they were left in, with no cover but the dead at their feet. They used it all the same, getting low and hauling their departed peers upright as fleshy shields. It was callous, cold-it was necessary. Kirika's tactical mind would have directed her no different. And if they were alive to comment, the human armour would probably feel it an honour to be used so by their surviving sisters.

A bullet hit the fire extinguisher mounted on wall, the rupture billowing carbon dioxide into the hallway in a hissing stream. Stray shot or deliberate, it was to the priestesses' advantage. The fire extinguisher sketched a veil across Kirika's line of sight-and, the teenager imagined, Mireille's as well-before the canister hollowed out, the grey a ready mélange with the priestesses' black suits. In the materialised murk Kirika's eyes couldn't distinguish what was a shadow or a corpse and what was a priestess still armed and on her feet.

Flashes of straggling muzzle flare and her memory gave the assassin direction however-Kirika maintained her fire, aiming where she recalled priestesses yet lived and where spurts of light emanated to confirm it. Return fire had waned, maybe only a single pistol insisting her sporadic withdrawal into cover. Vision ahead was still hazy, but Kirika juggled with the intuitive idea of pressing the attack home to deliver an immediate finishing assault in close quarters. She had superiority in her position right now, but time was a factor which was fast becoming a critical issue. The girl could kill what still breathed quicker up close, the mist a two-way cloak that would cover her rush until she was upon the women. Friendly fire inside the fumes from Mireille was a worry, but Kirika's gut placated her with groundless yet persuasive assurances. Mireille would not shoot her; *could* not, like it was a physical impossibility irrespective of circumstance. It made no sense, but Kirika believed it. Maybe it was her heart doing the talking.

Kirika reloaded her Beretta and moved out around the battered corner, but a peek of yellow kicking up swirling tides in the thinning carbon dioxide plume stayed her charge. The sudden blasts of muzzle flare and thunderous hail of streaking lead sent Kirika springing back to her refuge while the wall took a fresh pummelling. When the volley lifted, the assassin bounded out to counterattack the renewed resistance.

She never got a chance to bring her gun to bear. One of the men from the Soldats mansion in Paris, where Langonel's Manuscript had been found, was there in front of her. The smaller man, Vincent Hsu. And he had her right wrist.

"Braaaaaat…" he crooned.

Vincent's other fist, clasping an empty pistol, whacked her in the face and off balance, and then clean off her feet too as he released his grip on her wrist. Unseen in the pack of priestesses he'd had the same strategy as Kirika, except he had beaten her to the punch in quite the literal sense.

Kirika fell from the top of the stairs, her head rattling and cheek throbbing into numbness, but she fell like a cat, grace in every tumble; turned shoulders absorbing impacts and her petite body loose and submitting to the flow of the sloping plunge. She fell like she meant to fall, and when she came to rest on the landing at the bottom of the steps, she was stretched out on hand and feet, stomach low to the floor and her gun, still there in her clutches, aimed at where she had descended from. The assassin had fallen like a feline, but she was still the spider.

Kirika fired as soon as she was right way up, however Vincent had skipped down the stairs after her while she had tumbled and was already upon her. His foot lashed out as she pulled the trigger, knocking her gun's sight askance, the ignited round pinging piercingly off the guard rail and ricocheting to places unknown. A yellow pant leg flung a brown leather shoe sole straight into the teenager's face an instant later, and through the stars blinking in her eyes and in her head she felt Vincent seize her wrist again.

He had dropped his empty gun to grab it, and with his right hand he hit Kirika in the head once more with the speed and force only a trained practitioner in unarmed combat could muster. Vincent's left swung her hand with her Beretta into the metal stair railing again and again, battering it in an effort to slacken her hold on the weapon. It wasn't until the man's right hand snapped purposefully at her wrist did her muscles involuntarily spasm and hurl her firearm across the landing, out of her reach. He had known exactly where to strike to cripple her hand for the split second needed.

But it was the split second Kirika needed too. Committing himself to disarming her had left her assailant open, and the dark-haired assassin wasn't dependant on her gun to kill. Vincent tried to follow up his precise jab by backhanding Kirika, and he was very fast. Yet Kirika was faster. In spite of the blows to her head, she moved with viper-like reflexes. It was just pain; the actual wounds inflicted were minor. Her body could push through it, keep working. It would take something severe, potentially mortal, to slow her. Pain was merely an old acquaintance.

Kirika arched her head back, Vincent's fist whipping past her nose. Her left hand flashed, her fingers stabbing into the man's throat. He immediately choked; a clipped, garbled wheeze all he could get out, but it was all Kirika needed to know the attack had been effectual. That and his fingers relaxing around her wrist.

Kirika's right hand broke loose and Vincent jumped back, his struggle for oxygen not sapping the nimbleness from his legs so far. Her own agility in perfect form and both her hands now free, Kirika planted her right palm on the landing as her body flung up into the air, effectively cart-wheeling in place as much as her skirt's breadth allowed. Her whirling feet clubbed Vincent across his face, and as he recoiled his heels struck the bottom step of the stairway, tripping him over onto the other steps.

Kirika wheeled upright and snatched a hold of the railing with both her hands, before throwing her legs, pressed together, and with the weight of her body and momentum of her sidelong leap behind them, at Vincent's chest.

Vincent bared his teeth as he rolled his body aside and against the wall, Kirika's feet stamping on the stairs in his place. "Fuck you, brat," he croaked hatefully, still suffering the detriments of his throat being temporarily crushed. He pushed off the wall, reversing his roll while casting his leg out to hook Kirika in mid-flight.

Kirika bounced off the steps, propelling herself enough distance from Vincent that his kick took his aggression out on the air instead of her. The gangster's failure didn't deter him; it seemed to incense him to more furious heights of violence. As the girl landed, Vincent, definitely not short of breath if short on voice, pounced at the stairway handrail, employing it as a platform in an imitation of Kirika to thrust his feet at her skull.

The younger assassin matched her enemy's pace and increased it, bending her knees that little more during her landing that she ducked under his legs. The swinging limbs grazed through her hair, the margin as close as their respective alacrity was. The room it left didn't accommodate mistakes, but Kirika wasn't one inclined to make them. The cost was always dire, and the chance it was your last high.

Kirika turned to confront her foe as Vincent's feet found the floor behind her. There was space for them to manoeuvre now that they were face-to-face standing along the length of the landing, and the triad member pitched himself into the opportunity. His left fist opened the second stage of the brawl and Kirika weaved under and away from the arm, then buried her own fist below his ribs.

Vincent's torso screwed up awkwardly, agony in his movement; however his right fist was still able to maintain the pressure on Kirika. He threw it lower than its match, carving downwards from above his shoulder.

Kirika darted back, but straight after bounded forward during Vincent's follow-through, her leap providing her the height to punch him square in the face. He reeled to the side, his head and left shoulder crashing through the frosted glass of the landing's only window. Blood matted his black hair and dripped over his ear, and broken glass shards littered the floor amongst the dotted red splotches he spread.

"Graaa!" Vincent roared, clapping a hand over his ear and the wet side of his head. He snatched a handful of glass splinters, heedless of their points and edges, and lobbed them at Kirika like shrapnel.

The glass was nothing without an explosion to launch them, and Vincent's anger was no substitute. Kirika shielded her eyes, losing sight of the gangster but for his legs. They telegraphed his moves however, and when he dived upon the opening he thought he had wrought, the Soldats trained assassin was prepared for it.

Kirika deflected Vincent's crescent kick with a slap of her right hand as she hurtled herself forward. She grabbed his dangling necktie that she had noticed whipping about throughout their confrontation and yanked it down as hard as she could while jumping into the air, leading her climb with a lifted knee. As bone cracked against bone, the latter namely Vincent's chin, Kirika distantly hoped she hadn't torn her skirt.

Kirika grasped Vincent's shoulder and flipped herself over the stooped man, almost rolling along the slope of his back. She brought his necktie with her, a second fierce tug snapping his spine in the opposite direction; his hunch violently pulled into an arched stretch backwards.

Kirika had broken necks with the technique before; there was never a shortage of tie wearing men to hone the move on, especially around Soldats types. However the familiar wrenching snap never came, Vincent's taut neck muscles reinforcing the joints. His death would be slower then. Kirika rammed her elbow into his back and pulled his tie even tighter over her shoulder with both hands now, the red garment his noose and the girl the gallows for his hanging.

Vincent fought against his strangulation, scratching and tugging at his necktie while his feet kicked and scuffed the floor, but his poor footing was nothing to build an escape on, other than going limp and surrendering to the noose. He began to swing his elbows, trying anxiously to hit Kirika and perhaps weaken her grip; however his reach was too limited, the angle too vast. Kirika pulled harder.

Suddenly Vincent's feet were on the wall, and he had traction. He was moving. Up. He ran up the wall and then pushed off it with his legs, the force propelling him over Kirika in a reversal of her somersault that had pinned him. Kirika looked upwards in time to see his fist smash into her forehead as he passed above her.

Kirika staggered, letting go of Vincent's tie. The gangster himself collapsed into a corner of the landing, coughing madly while his knees appeared to muse with the thought of buckling. They both saw it at once. Kirika's Beretta M1934.

Vincent dived for it, sudden strength in desperation. Kirika had read his intentions and had sprung for her weapon too, meeting him in a frantic grapple on the floor. The gun skittered away from them, tumbling down the next flight of steps to the lower level.

There was no finesse in their fight when up so close to each other; Kirika bludgeoned and battered her adversary with everything she could; hands and feet, knees and elbows, and Vincent matched her assault blow for blow. The eyes were a common target, Kirika having to defend them often from being squashed in or clawed out while she attempted to blind the hitman just the same. Vincent's groin turned out to be a particular vulnerability that he battled feverishly to protect once he realised the area was under threat, breaking off his current attacks. Kirika exploited it fully.

The two assassins' wrestling quickly saw them thrown down the stairs in their violent embrace, the crude brutality enduring all the way to their landing, neither able to call upon their respective adroitness to control the fall. They struck the floor heavily, finally spilling apart from one another.

"I can't believe how much I'm going to kill you…" Vincent growled as he and Kirika picked themselves up onto their hands and knees. Kirika met his promise of death with apathy in her answering gaze, the vision of his death in her mind all the pledge she needed, but shouts from one end of the corridor they had been dumped into precluded both vows for now. The police had arrived.

In a last ditch effort Kirika lunged for her pistol, seizing it in her two hands-one to hold and one to steady-and fluidly rolled over to slide supine across the floor, firing above her head at Vincent. The gangster flung himself back toward the stairs, the railings his cover for the nine millimetre salvo. Kirika rolled onto her stomach and then leapt to her feet, entering the stairway and running down the steps to the building's lower floors two at a time. She shot in Vincent's direction until her clip was expended, then didn't look back. Her time was up.

Vincent's yelling overhead while she plunged down the stairs told her she had missed, but sticking around risked her being seen by the authorities in detail that could be described clearly. Likewise, fighting it out with police who were alert and in growing number was undesirable, and an option only if cornered.

"Not me; the brat!" Vincent was screaming. "The brat! Get the brat! The… the *girl*! I don't even have a gun, you dumb fucks! She does! The kid!"

"The kid?"

Loud and fast footsteps followed Kirika on the higher flights of stairs she left behind. Police officers were in pursuit. She'd lose them, or she'd kill them. Either way, Kirika would make her rendezvous with Mireille. Nothing and no one could keep them separated for long. She hoped Mireille had had more success than she did.

* * *

Mireille slipped behind the wall of an adjacent corridor as a sudden torrent of bullets threatened to eviscerate her, the passionate opposition coming as a surprise after the woman and her partner, Kirika, had seemingly decimated the majority of the bodyguard priestesses-and with luck, Kaede Ishinomori herself together with them-along the length of first hallway to the point of dead or dying. While the blonde bided her time in her cover with the patience experience had taught, she noted the shots were as unreserved as they were uncoordinated, slugs embedding themselves in the walls and ceiling further down the other corridor, and with no signs of stopping until the magazine ran dry. The priestess doing the shooting was certainly not a markswoman-perhaps she was one of Kaede's lawyers or that woman in the dress. Although, if Mireille hadn't moved back, at this range the priestess's untamed aim would not have been a drawback for her. Smart people always tried to avoid gunfire when they could regardless of the accuracy however, and Mireille was smart. Arrogance bred carelessness, and then sooner or later you were no longer alive to regret your overconfidence.

Mireille continued waiting, listening for the telltale click of an empty clip and the signal to pounce. The priestesses had been wise; taking turns firing upon Mireille's position while the rest at this side of the hallway took the opportunity to reload. Perhaps they had changed frequencies, but their radios had fallen silent too at the beginning of the shootout after a call for reinforcements and broadcasting their position, denying the blonde insight into their tactical minds. The priestesses in the Manor had fought without such communication technology to her knowledge; maybe they had no dependency on it. Still, Mireille had kept her radio's ear bud in.

This priestess had no such discipline in her handling of firearms. The fog issued from the fire extinguisher was clearing; the Corsican assassin would probably only need a single round to terminate the amateur's foray on the Black Path.

"Halt, damn it! I said stop right there, you trash!"

Mireille's head swung in the direction of the shouting and drumming of feet; down the corridor she was taking refuge in. She made a face. It was the police-two uniformed cops; each with a hand on their revolver holsters; chasing three men whose shady attire gave off classic underworld vibes. They were all heading right for her.

The men saw Mireille the same time she saw them. Hands went behind backs and inside jackets, heedless of the law on their heels. So it was like that. The yakuza were with the priestesses. Strange company… but Mireille could mull over it later, when she had fewer predicaments. The men, police included, had trapped her in a budding crossfire-gunfire from the Soldats rebels still capable of lifting their arms and from the gangsters and police would be a bullet sandwich for the blonde assassin, her former cover even shielding either side from accidentally hitting one another thanks to the T-junction's shape. The policemen might take out the gangsters before they had a chance to shoot, but then Mireille would soak fire from the authorities a second after.

So many problems were solved simply by killing everyone. They had seen her face anyway.

Mireille dropped into a crouch and swivelled around to face the newcomers proper, before promptly shooting one yakuza in the chest. It bowled him off his feet, depositing him flat on his back.

"Shit!"

The other two thugs panicked, stopping dead in their tracks and ducking their heads, as if they believed they could rely on their lacklustre reflexes to miraculously dodge any more incoming bullets. The elder of the pair realised the foolishness of standing out there in the open and snatched his younger companion's collar, dragging the still startled man with him as he threw his shoulder against the nearest door leading out of the corridor; a small janitor's closet if Mireille remembered correctly. The door wheeled open, flying on its hinges, and the men bundled clumsily inside after it.

The gangsters had no cause to fear the assassin just yet; they had not been in Mireille's sight. The police officers behind them had her dire attention, mutually having forgotten their pursuit of the thugs and drawing their pistols against the obvious threat Mireille posed. Their efforts were pointless, however. Before the barrels of their revolvers cleared the leather sleeves, the blonde had put a round apiece in their chests. The cops were just doing their job, but so was Mireille. And she was better at hers.

"Takeo~! Just stay put!" one of the gangsters hollered from the closet. 'Takeo' yet lived, although for how much longer was a dubious subject. There was no question that he was staying put though; he laboured terribly to merely pick his head off the floor. Takeo spat, a wad of pink gum bouncing along his chest and blood spraying down his chin. His right hand lifted, shaking. There was a gun in it. His lips moved, but nothing came out bar more blood.

Mireille bolted across the hall into cover, keeping low in her crouch as Takeo fired at her, his friends added their steadier shots to his. She squeezed off a couple of slugs as she ran, one drilling into Takeo's shoulder. Mireille heard him wail.

The blonde assassin tucked in her shoulder and rolled across the floor as soon as she was out of the gangsters' line of sight, spinning about-face, aware that in evading them she had exposed herself to the Soldats mutineers' position in the intersecting corridor. The carbon dioxide shroud over them was gone, and the carnage it bared would have been jarring if Mireille was not so accustomed to creating such scenes. Besides, it was the people still alive, not the casualties, which concerned her.

In a minute sliver of a second Mireille sized up the situation; one bodyguard lived, wounded in leg and hip, anxiously staring at her while she raced to shove a clip into her Glock; the lawyer clutching a visibly empty gun was crouched below her, her glasses fractured and blood in her inordinately long hair-her off-balance stance branded her as the amateur of the armed duo; the woman in the dress sat behind them with her hands over her ears against a wall-the Corsican could safely determine her a non-combatant of low threat; and then there was Kaede Ishinomori, regrettably still alive and appearing unharmed, but for her gibbering and twitching on the floor, lying on her side amidst the corpses and blood stains. She was smiling. The smile never moved; a paralysis to her lips while she ranted. Had Mireille and Kirika's assassination attempt driven her mad? There was no sanity in the woman. Killing her might be a mercy.

Mireille dropped onto her side and snapped off two shots in the same instant the last surviving bodyguard unleashed a final fit of futile resistance against her. The one bullet the priestess managed to squeeze off sailed harmlessly overhead-Mireille's shots had much more of an impact when they ravaged her chest. The woman toppled to be with her other cohorts littering the floor.

"Move it!"

Mireille instinctively dipped her head as gunfire thundered above her, the hail of slugs delving into the wall behind the assassin to dribble flakes of drywall onto her shoulder and in her hair. Glaring, the Corsican saw that one of the yakuza had poked his pistol and only his pistol around the corner of the neighbouring passage, firing blindly at her location. If she hadn't been on the ground the blind shots might have actually struck her. The thug was intelligent enough to appreciate the danger she was; enough to hide from her. Intelligent, but it would only protect him for so long.

Reacting quickly, Mireille let loose a volley at the gangster's weapon, her third shot tearing his semi-automatic from his fingers, and hopefully tearing some of those fingers too with it. He howled, but abandoned his handgun where it had clattered to the floor. The man had done what he had set out to do-sidetrack Ishinomori's would-be killer for a while.

The distracting fire had covered Kaede's and her party's remnant's withdrawal to the gangsters' position in the other hallway. Or at least the commencement of that retreat; the thug responsible for the diversion probably hadn't expected to be disarmed so swiftly. The last priestess, the possible lawyer, had even roused the traumatised woman in the dress to follow her while she ushered Kaede, enclosed in her arms, to relative security. But no safe-haven existed on earth for Kaede Ishinomori today.

The opening was a slim one, governed by lightning reflexes, but Mireille required a bare minimum to work with. Her piercing eye followed her gunsight as it snapped to Kaede, and across it she witnessed the end of this farce Breffort had coerced her and Kirika on. Mireille pulled the trigger on her Walther P99, the woman cool in the moment of the ordained kill.

Mireille's eyes widened when the bullet punctured the lawyer's bicep; the priestess's body somehow there, shielding Noir's target. If it had been her goal, it wasn't obvious. The Soldats rebel shrieked as though in her death throes, yet to her credit she kept running… out of sight.

A swear word came to mind as Mireille leapt to her feet, but she contented herself with a sharp breath past her teeth instead. She bolted around the corner after her prey, her haste fraying her caution. The blonde's shoes slid on the tiles as she abruptly back-pedalled behind the wall again, hot lead almost searing tunnels in her flesh. The yakuza were there, watching Kaede and the other women's backs; the older hoodlum had pulled a backup pistol from someplace, and the younger, though trying to haul his badly haemorrhaging and all but comatose friend down the corridor by his arm, had joined in pinning Mireille in her spot with his own peppered gunfire. Blood had streaked the path the gangster had dragged the wounded Takeo-his toil would be for naught; death's grip could not be shaken off. Naïve.

Mireille clenched her jaw and carried out some blind firing of her own around the worn corner. She cleaned out what was left of her clip in the rapid burst, the vehement curses uttered in the linking corridor and the ceasing of suppressing fire ambiguous hints of the attack's payoff.

The assassin traded her magazine for a new one, and threw herself around the corner to face her assailants. They and the women had made off a fair distance, the injured gangster forsaken beside the dead policemen. More than injured now-Takeo was dead.

The elder, near bald thug had a limp in his right leg; however it didn't seem to be hampering his frenetic pace. Then again, Mireille was at his rear; adrenaline could be a powerful painkiller, and fear a powerful motivator. He had Kaede within his arms now, shepherding her onwards while the priestess and the woman in the dress ran ahead. The priestess cradled her arm stiffly, still holding her empty Glock 18 machine pistol, while the woman in the dress held her blood-encrusted sunhat to her breast like a shield and skipped more than she ran. The young thug followed behind jogging and looking over his shoulder, and accelerating into a run for brief periods to catch up with the rebels.

Her weapon steady in her two hands, Mireille fired down the hallway. The young yakuza cried out and stumbled, then hopped, slapping his hand over the left side of his lower back, but he still moved forward, albeit erratically.

"Drop it!"

Mireille's right arm swung toward the voice, and she fired twice. The cop who had shown up at the top of the stairwell shouldering a shotgun tumbled, his limbs tangling in the railings halfway down the steps. A thought went out to Kirika, pushing through Mireille's single-minded concentration on the mission. Mireille hadn't seen her partner since the opening stages of their assault, and now the girl's position was unguarded. She shouldn't be concerned; Kirika was more than capable of defending herself, yet the uneasiness stuck inside the blonde. Doubt crept in. Imagination fired up. Perhaps it was another natural behaviour, given Mireille's deep affection for the younger assassin. But it wasn't the time for uncertainty; for distrust when there shouldn't be a trace of any. Kirika was the same girl she had been yesterday, equipped with the same amazing skill. Mireille had to put her love, girl and feelings both, out of her mind.

When the Corsican contract killer looked back along the corridor she saw neither Kaede nor any other soul. Kaede Ishinomori, her hoodlum rescuers, and the priestess and woman in the sundress, were gone. Fool!

Mireille sprinted down the other hallway at full speed, which despite being clad in her dressy suit and heels was achieved without impediment. Indeed, such clothing was as combat gear to the blonde subsequent to years of work dressed in style; style that integrated her into the nondescript populace, but style to fit a catwalk all the same.

Kaede and her company were heading to the motorcade out front for certain. It was their escape. Mireille just had to beat them there. Chasing them through the courthouse would have been folly; there were too many cameras outside of this area, and the police had already emerged from the direction the rebels took. In addition the stairwell behind Mireille was compromised with Kirika's absence, however the woman knew of a smaller one close by that would serve just as good.

Mireille kept her Walter P99 unholstered since she was unbound from the threat of being taped while armed, and moreover there could be Soldats reinforcements closing in who were familiar with her identity. Consequently, the blonde was forced to skid to a halt at each bend and blindspot to check if it was clear to go on, lest she run straight into a trigger-happy priestess or a cop hellbent on detaining and interrogating her. The precautions slowed and as a result aggravated the assassin, but they didn't aggravate Mireille enough for her to forgo them and jeopardise her life.

Mireille arrived at the stairwell's door in a time that felt too lengthy, but couldn't have been longer than a minute or so. She paused at the door, gingerly pushing it open with a foot while the barrel of her gun did the surveying of the narrow passageway behind it. When it was clear there were no surprises on the other side Mireille resumed her dash, this time down steps that led to the ground floor.

Sound echoed in the tight concrete shaft, and after a couple of flights the assassin was quick to realise she was not alone. The bass of hurried footsteps reverberated up, too fast and many to be a single person, however the original beats were high in pitch, suggesting raised heels-women's shoes. It was policewomen or priestesses. Mireille didn't bet on it being the former. She'd have to sight them to be sure in any case. It might simply be a pair of civilians that she wouldn't have to confront.

No matter what, Mireille couldn't reduce her pace. The ticket home was slipping away, and that was one trip she *must* make, and not just for herself. Least of all for herself.

The Corsican held her pistol low just behind her leg, although her gut said it was wishful thinking that she'd need to conceal her weapon and ultimately avoid combat.

The glimpse of black suits immediately followed by a short-lived rain of automatic fire that suddenly ricocheted and sparked off the metal handrails proved Mireille's instincts correct once again. Those Glock 18s. They'd be quite potent and not to mention lethal in these close quarters, but Mireille didn't have the time to trade shots with the two rebels on the stairs below her.

Putting caution to the wind and faith in ability, Mireille vaulted over the railings with her left hand, pivoting her body one hundred and eighty degrees in the same motion. She fired in midair, a bullet for each of the rebels, and which found their marks as keenly as if she had been aiming at length on the ground. The priestesses rolled like boned fish down the stairs to the next landing, piling together in a softly whimpering heap, and Mireille landed firmly on a step with a solitary hard rap of her heels. Machine pistols; or any kind of firearm; were useless if you didn't pull the trigger.

Roadblock destroyed as immediate as it had been erected, Mireille descended the stairs with all urgency. As she trotted over the bested women, she shot both again in passing whilst sustaining her harried stride, her eyes never seeing them. It wasn't in Mireille's makeup to leave her victims merely wounded. There were still a few others left for her to administer the coup de grace to, and it would so nag her if they weren't put out of their misery.

* * *

Dominique hurtled headlong through the fire door, her scuttling legs contained in her tight and unforgiving skirt nevertheless practically unstoppable whilst taken by her mad dash. If she had been of sounder mind she would've forever cursed her high heels with the skirt; once again she almost rolled an ankle and tripped over her own feet.

The fire alarm squealed and she stumbled together with the heavy swinging door, the arm she *could* use reaching to clutch the long handle bar and steady herself. Blood wiped the chrome crimson where her hand slipped; her own for sure this time.

Dominique was in an alley, the strident noise of the streets as welcoming as the melodies of songbirds in a peaceful glade. Freedom at last. Safety mere metres away in the mobile bastions waiting for them. She wanted to continue to run and run and run, but what if *they* were waiting for them as well? There were two of them; the other one could be *ahead* of them!

And then there was Kaede. The child wasn't able for this. Dominique shouldered the guilt for bringing Hikaru's daughter outside the walls of Ishinomori Tower. Kaede hadn't been ready. Dominique should have *seen* that! She should have found *some* means for Kaede to sit her trial in absentia. The girl's current bodyguard, butchered like lambs at the sword points of the Black Hands. It could not end here… Kaede had to make it out. She had to live. If she were to be slain, Dominique would not be capable of lifting her head to face Hikaru.

"G-Give her," the woman swallowed, whetting her throat, and looked back inside the stairwell, "give her to me."

The slovenly man in the white suit; one pant leg darkened by seeping blood; who held Kaede favoured Dominique with an impatient expression, and hobbled over to her. Suddenly his hand slapped against hers; against the hand she kept rigid against her chest, still gripping the gun she had borrowed in stone-like fingers. She screamed and her fingers felt as flesh again. Her arm screamed with her. The gun was dropped but she never heard its landing. Dominique hadn't ever been shot before; not even when she and Hikaru had been ambushed. But then Hikaru had seen to that. The angel was only here in spirit now however, not body, as was the too dear and painful cost of such selfless love. May she protect Dominique and Kaede even so.

"You can't," Ryosuke's boy stated beyond the haze of anguish.

Through the tears in her green eyes Dominique observed the other thug shamble down the last few steps, one hand leaning on the railing and holding his pistol, and the other pressed to his hip. Blood poured past his fingers and covered his hand, and his suit appeared as if he had traipsed carelessly through a slaughterhouse. His youthful countenance was ashen.

"I… I can't…" the boy huffed, hunching over the handrail once he made it to the landing. "I'll stay put… here… wait for her. Get… Kumicho out of here."

The older gangster stared silently at the boy, hard and obdurate, but a moment later he nodded soberly. "Here." He tossed his pistol to the mortally wounded young man. A bloodied hand caught it easily. The older yakuza grinned lopsidedly. Dominique meanwhile questioned the intelligence of giving up their last working firearm to a corpse.

"You. Stay close," the white suited man barked at Fumiko, the useless whore dithering in a corner of the stairwell. "You," he coarsely addressed Dominique. "Move!"

Dominique was virtually pushed outside into the alley by the hoodlum, but the sight of two sisters at one end of it erased her fear and anger. "Y-You there! We need you!" The sisters; guards likely posted in the alley as security for Kaede's and her retinue's rear extraction; came running.

"Aniki! …No, she's… You didn't- it was an ambush! No, no, no! Stay at the front! We're almost to you!" The gangster had replaced his gun for his mobile phone. Dominique had her sisters; he had Ryosuke. For once Dominique wouldn't have minded Kaede's brother's presence nearby her.

The sisters' chests' erupted in bursts of blood, showering Dominique's hopeful face and dotting the lenses of her glasses. They faltered and crumpled before the woman's feet. *She* was behind them, another door open further down admitting death into the alley. The fear returned as if it had never gone.

"Move!" the gangster roared. Dominique moved.

She heard louder gunfire behind her and bullets hitting bricks; she chanced a glance over her shoulder to witness the dying young man speed toward his ultimate demise, propped against the fire-door while braving the blonde assassin with his two guns blazing. Dominique didn't watch longer, but when his guns went silent she could imagine the woman's blade had cleaved him in half.

The gunfire had panicked bystanders; the street in front of the courthouse was gripped in a riot. The fire alarm probably hadn't helped nerves either. But through the screaming, swirling people Dominique saw the limo and the rest of the motorcade, and more sisters armed and ready. One held the limo's passenger door open, beckoning her frantically into its fortress interior. She was going to make it. They were… Kaede!

Dominique whirled around, almost literally being bowled over by someone's shoulder smashing into hers, searching for Kaede and the gangster. For the few seconds of bafflement the French woman did not fear the Black Hands and what they would do to her, but was terrified for the child she had sworn to look after.

She spotted them at the edge of the courthouse; he was taking her elsewhere; up the steps of the courthouse, to him. To Ryosuke. Dominique should have anticipated his loyalties! She had run too far ahead. She had to get Kaede into the limousine where she had *guaranteed* protection, which *wasn't* found in the company of a common yakuza!

Dominique looked back at the limo pensively, but she knew her course. Maybe some sisters could assis-

The sister at the passenger door was enveloped in flame, and a pyre was ignited into destructive life within Dominique's vision. She felt as if she was falling, but something or someone caught her. Something hard cracked against the back of her skull, and darkness swam before her eyes to devour the conflagration. The darkness…. Noir.

* * *

"Ken- what's wrong? Kaede, is she- What's happening? …Ambush? I'm coming to you! …Ken? Damn it!"

Ryosuke barged a path through the raving people back to the front entrance of the courthouse, frequently blowing men and women off their feet to be trampled unsympathetically by others. When it came to one's own survival it was rare when another's mattered more. Ryosuke was one of those rare people who had someone whose life was genuinely valued greater than his own, however. And he had to reach her.

The fire alarm had had him return to the lobby, but Ken's anxious phone call had torn him back out again, vastly more concerned than before. Ryosuke had heard it in the yakuza's voice-this was bad. It hadn't been since the altercation that had cost Ken his finger that Ryosuke had heard his voice sound like that. End of the world stuff. The world that mattered, anyway.

"Aniki!"

Ryosuke shoved another pedestrian out of the way and saw Ken at the foot of the building's steps, on the left side. The relief on Ken's face was so strong it was unsettling. Fumiko was with him, and… Kaede. The amount of blood on the trio widened the black-clad man's eyes behind his sunglasses. She was hurt. Where was Vin?

Then he saw *her*, and whether Vin was even still alive came into doubt. The blonde woman from Paris; standing there, unmoved in the frightened crowd of weaklings. The Japanese girl must be here too. The so-called 'Noir'. They had followed.

Ryosuke's mobile phone fell from his hand, kicked away and then crushed by the fleeing masses. There was no time to swear oaths against Dominique and her small-minded meddling that had led the assassins here-no time for anything except to draw his gun. Hers was in her hand already, rising; she knew his vulnerabilities and had the drop on him, or worse, his sister. Their eyes met, and the silver plating of his pistol flashed in the sun as his coat disgorged it. No time. Ryosuke prayed she was aiming for him.

There was a shrill whoosh, and then tremendous explosion rocked the street. Instinctively Ryosuke's arm shielded his face, ready for fire, shrapnel-anything. The motorcade had been bombed. No, not bombed; struck by some explosive. The limo had been the target, but that civilian tank was better armoured than he was; it was intact, if dented and on fire in places. Some of Dominique's soldiers lay motionless on the road and pavement; a few charred past human, others maimed and gutted that frailer sorts would wish weren't human. Pedestrians had suffered also, sharing a likeness to the rebels in the brutality of their deaths.

A second whoosh and Ryosuke saw a line of smoke being drawn in the air, a missile or rocket or some explosive airborne projectile as the pen. It was a white streak across buildings for mere seconds before it touched down upon the car in front of the limousine, blowing the merely lightly reinforced vehicle into scrap. The detonation was mammoth, storeys high as the car's fuel tank lit up in response. It shook the very earth, Ryosuke having to take a step back to maintain his balance. The cloudy trail had originated from a rooftop on the opposite side of the street. It was difficult to see through the black smoke billowing into the sky, but he saw men up there making good their escape. It was probably Soldats; the one Dominique and the others were at war with. Noir might be working with the many-eyed beast after all in spite of their denial, and had brought their benefactors with them as support.

Scant moments had lapsed, but Ryosuke threw his attention back to the blonde half of Noir angry at himself and hoping his slip, however short, hadn't been capitalised on. Ken laboured up the courthouse's steps, his heavily bleeding leg source of his disability, escorting Kaede with him. Fumiko tagged along at the rear, luck liable to be solely responsible for the pathetic dog still breathing this day.

But the crowd had swallowed the Parisian woman. Of Noir, there was no trace.

* * *

The ringing of the fire alarm followed Kirika as she ran down the final flight of stairs. It had started some time ago, while she had been evading any police officers on her tail by wiping the blood from her nose with her sleeve and exiting on another level to then change stairwells. The alarm had turned out to be to her benefit; the evacuating staff and visitors had been simple to dissolve into.

The young assassin thought she had heard an explosion minutes ago as well; part of the fire, maybe? Her thoughts dwelled on Mireille. Their separation was lasting too long. Kirika had to hurry to their rendezvous point to soak her eyes in her love's perfection and relax in her reassuring aura once again, whether they had succeeded or failed in their mission a subject for a later hour; it wouldn't matter to the teenager at that moment. Kirika expected Mireille to be there; the other negative possibility could not enter her mind. Painful what-ifs did not bear thinking about… when she could help it.

Making it to the ground floor, Kirika jogged toward the fire exit. Suddenly the noise of the hectic courthouse entered the previously quiet stairwell from behind her. A door had opened.

"F-Freeze!"

Kirika responded faster than a heart could beat, half-turning and firing her Beretta twice from her hip. She breathed in sharply.

It was a policeman, and the shock on his face shone in the reddish-brown of Kirika's widened eyes. He had given her a chocolate bar. How he was here now, if he had somehow tracked her; the answers didn't matter. Whatever they were, it was moot now.

The policeman's mouth hanged open, and he looked down at the two bullet holes in his chest as he slumped against the doorjamb. His jaw worked, but nothing was said.

He slid to the floor and looked up at Kirika, something in his glassy gaze; imploring and confusion… then hollowness.

Kirika's hand holding her gun dropped to her side. Sometimes meetings in the darkness ended this way, where and when the two different worlds crossed. More than just sometimes. People with faces, with futures that should be secure from this type of end, died.

[He was just on the wrong side. You or him, him or your *partner*; the choice isn't difficult.]

The choice *was* clear, but too many always seemed to be on the wrong side. Too many lives. But at the end of the day Kirika was glad she was alive. She was glad Mireille was alive. There was forever the regret, the guilt of a demon at her grisly toil; but it had never stopped her. And what worth were their lives when balanced against Mireille's? Kirika would trade them all for her love's life.

Kirika left the policeman's body where it sat, and pushed open the fire door.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

This has got to be the longest chapter I've ever written! I've very glad to have finally finished it. T_T

Satsu = Yakuza slang for cop.


	22. These Lives

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twenty-second chapter. Plot stuff.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 22 - This Life

"Twenty-two people. *Dead*. Most of them linked with your family's company- bodyguards, right?-and two I *know* run with *your* group; your… 'Kanagawa Kotetsu'." The young inspector sucked on his cigarette-Ryosuke hadn't bothered to catch his name when he'd announced it after flashing his badge, waving the thing around with the arrogance authority afforded, like a kid with a toy no one else had-and breathed smoke into the air out through his nose, in the manner of a snorting bull caricature. His eyes darted back and forth through the slowly rising wispy grey plumes to where yakuza still loitered, although under the wary scrutiny of more police officers.

Ryosuke stared at the ashen nub that lit up in the man's fingers during his drag. The courthouse's no-smoking rule didn't apply to the inspector it seemed. But of course-he belonged to the rule makers.

"The rest were civilians," the inspector blathered on, big shot for a day. He was making the most of his soapbox time. "And *cops*. Good men that didn't deserve it. Men with families. Men with *worth*, unlike you and your punks!" Another jittery puff on his cigarette, and the scent of smoke teasing Ryosuke's nostrils, mocking his deprivation. "I know you know what's going on. Yokohama's turned into a… a…" he shook his head and flicked some ash onto the lobby's floor, "…an American city. Homicides are becoming the norm, and they're being committed with firearms. *Illegal* firearms. Not just the peashooters I know you scum have, but serious hardware. For fuck's sake there was an RPG attack out there!" The inspector gestured heatedly toward the foyer's exit and the cordoned off street that lay beyond, flinging ash and embers. "Shit like that had to come from somewhere, and *someone* is doing the killing with them."

The cop bent down to Ryosuke, wagging the two fingers with the cigarette in the seated gangster's face. "And I know you know something. The gangs are pretty much sitting back, except for *yours*. The victims are random; lowlifes to law-abiding salarymen. Solitary murders to massacres of scores of individuals. And now your little pharmaceutical company's 'employees'. A lot of bodyguards to bring to a trial. Were you worried about something? Or just wanting to put on airs? Nice coincidence they were actually needed. Not so nice for them though, eh?" He blew smoke in Ryosuke's face, but the stony killer didn't so much as bat an eye. "Who was it, Ryosuke? Who's doing this?" The inspector had lowered his voice; secretive and coaxing, as though Ryosuke was some two-bit thug who sang to the Satsu after they applied the slightest pressure, or after they pathetically pretended to be a sympathetic ear.

"You're the police. It's your job to protect the people and investigate, not beg me for answers," Ryosuke murmured. In the panicked crowd apparently no one had seen him draw his firearm, apart from the woman he was aiming for. Without that, the cops had nothing on him-if they had, they'd have sent a senior inspector to lean on him, not this young pup.

"They tried to kill your sister. Your *sister*," the inspector continued to push. "That's your entire family, isn't it. They're going to wipe you out, just like your mother and father." He sneered now, low and mean; no longer a friend.

"Enough with your feeble rhetoric. We're both in the dark," Ryosuke responded coolly, the jabs concerning his late parents obvious in their intent and weak in carrying it out.

The inspector scoffed and straightened. "Why don't I haul your ass down to the precinct and give you a *proper* interrogation? Check to see if you and your pals are packing? Is that how you want it? Maybe one of the bullets we dig out of the corpses here will match one of your guns, hmm?"

"You're wasting your time," Ryosuke said evenly, unflappable. "I didn't kill anyone… today."

The policeman scoffed again. "You think you're hot shit, don't you." Seeming to realise the futility of harping on to Ryosuke, he began to walk away to find better use for his time. "Maybe next time I see you I'll be covering *you* with a sheet."

"If it must be so," Ryosuke said softly, mainly to himself. He sat forwards, elbows on his knees, and took out a cigarette and his lighter, sparking a flame into life.

"Hey," the inspector called, turning back. He smirked obnoxiously. "There's no smoking here."

Ryosuke snapped his lighter shut and watched the cop finally go, smoke ribbons following after him. He'd never met a cop he liked, and it seemed today wouldn't be changing that. But they were on different sides of the law; lived in different societies-it was the natural order of things.

Ryosuke stared blankly ahead, however the scene around him was at odds with his disinterest. Cops in suits clustered in small gatherings spread across Yokohama District Courthouse's lobby; every once in a while one leaving and a new one joining, the latter typically snapping off latex gloves or pocketing a notebook as they did. Their uniformed lessers had their hands full keeping the curious public and media outside and the courthouse staff from getting underfoot… and also ensuring Ryosuke's brothers didn't inexplicably create some kind of fuss in the lobby's lounge-unbeknownst to them a very easy and ultimately unnecessary duty. Natural order of things, Ryosuke wearily reminded himself.

Paramedics killed time on the courthouse steps, probably awaiting the word to cart off the bodies once the police had done whatever it was they were doing. Forensics and chalk outlines if they still did that sort of thing. They'd be drawing them for a while.

The inspector hadn't mentioned them, but there had been plenty of wounded for the ambulance personnel to treat and several to rush to hospital sirens blaring, however everything had cooled down in the last hour. All court affairs had been cancelled and rescheduled for another day too, voiding the majority of the building, although Ryosuke suspected some of this morning's visitors still remained, providing witness statements to the Satsu. He bet their interviews were being conducted more cordially than his and his fellow yakuza's had been, but in any case he was sure they had given up little more useful information to the cops than he and his tight-lipped gang had. Ryosuke wondered if Dominique's Soldats rebels had been interrogated and what they had said, if any had survived to be questioned that was. It was the dead that had all the answers the police were looking for. Wasn't that always the case.

The lobby's lounge was where the Kanagawa Kotetsu's second found himself, waiting with his comrades but sitting alone. Most of Kaede's Kanagawa Kotetsu entourage had been sent home to gang offices or back to Ishinomori Tower; the remaining few stuck by Ryosuke out of dedication or the mildly insulting belief he needed the protection-yet understandable considering the morning's events-and two no longer had the life in them to walk out of here.

"Yo."

Ryosuke's eyes swung to and focused on Ken as the man hobbled up to him, his right pant leg bloodied and split down the outer side. He had been among the people that the paramedics had ministered to in the backs of ambulances assembled in fleets on the street outside. Thankfully Ken's injury was not in the 'rush to hospital' category which put survivability up in the air. He had acted courageously and selflessly, plucking Ryosuke's sister from what should have been death; his own death would've been a regretful cost for his noble actions, and undeserving. He'd never say it openly, but Ryosuke was indebted to him. However, Ken's behaviour wasn't a new marvel. For him, the gang, and its boss, came before anything, even if it landed him in trouble meant for them.

Ken dropped onto the couch beside Ryosuke, slouching slovenly into the cushions. The pant leg fell open as he sat, bandages wrapped around his thigh peeking through.

"How's the leg?" Ryosuke asked.

"This? A scratch. Had worse after that night in Shibuya with Jun. Remember that? She was a beauty. Too good for me, but she was charitable." Ken grinned lopsidedly and nudged Ryosuke with his elbow. He was in high spirits for almost getting killed. "I'll have a limp for a couple of days, maybe," he said, sobering up a tad. "Nothing that'll slow me down." He fingered the surgical cut made along his trouser leg by the ambulance personnel. "Bitch that they had to trash my suit. It was one of my favourites."

"I'm sure you have plenty more like it." It was too stereotypical yakuza for him not to.

"Well, yeah," Ken admitted, almost sheepishly. "But that's not the point. It's mine. And it wasn't cheap."

For Ken, he hadn't had a choice in staying with Ryosuke or leaving, owing to the cops dragging him off behind the doors of the lobby's security office straight after he'd been patched up. The grilling the Satsu had given him had probably been severe; certainly more so than the fairly brief bullying Ryosuke had received. Ken had been missing for nearly two hours, that alone telling of the police's keen interest in him. He'd been one of the rare survivors directly involved in the violence, and if not a chief suspect in several of the murders, then a chief witness. Ryosuke was surprised the cops hadn't held him for at least twenty-four hours. He was surprised they hadn't held everyone from his gang just out of spite.

Ken rubbed the black fuzz on top of his head. "I lost all my guns. Good thing, I guess. I'd nothing incriminating on me. Just an innocent bystander who got lucky; that's me, heh. The Satsu that saw me bust through the checkpoint are dead too, which helped. Dead men tell no tales, eh, aniki?"

"No. They don't," Ryosuke said. "Can the guns be traced back to you?"

"Nah. Serials filed off, standard stuff. Jokers don't have my prints, either."

Ryosuke didn't need to ask Ken if he'd mentioned anything the cops could use against them or even Dominique's people. If offered the choice earlier, Ken would have been among those who stayed at Ryosuke's side, gunshot wound be damned.

Ryosuke sighed. "Takeo and Nobuo?"

Ken released a longer, more forceful breath. "They died well."

No, Ryosuke thought, they had just died. Dead was dead-whatever honour they had earned meant nothing to them now.

"I'll tell their families," Ken said, sombrely taking on the duty this time. He'd go personally, into homes often where the bitter abuse of heartbroken parents and siblings waited, or worse, sobbing wives or girlfriends and confused children. It was sadder still when the fallen had no kin or lover to mourn their passing, where family had been the gang itself. Ryosuke liked to think that he and his brothers had provided those lonely men with something before the grave, but sleepless nights featuring old faces rising from his memory spoke of his doubt.

Too many times Ryosuke and Ken had had to darken families' doorsteps as bearers of bleak news no one wanted to hear. Too many dead, and too many for no good reason. Word on the streets was the Kanagawa Kotetsu was bleeding, and it looked mortal. No young men came to the group's offices seeking recruitment, and those whose loyalty or nerve was flagging ended up disappearing one day. Ryosuke and Ken disciplined those they managed to track down with a han-goroshi-a vicious beating-but Ryosuke's heart wasn't in it, and afterwards he let them go without looking back. He understood. The smart ones ran far, far away… to the country, or to Kansai, or south to Okinawa. Anywhere Soldats was less in the open and not on the warpath. The men who still stood by Ryosuke and the Ishinomori family were to be lauded. Their guts and faithfulness were unique. Men like Takeo and Nobuo had been.

"How did you know there was trouble?" Ryosuke quizzed Ken out of the blue, recalling that he himself hadn't heard the opening gunshots whilst hanging around mere metres from the courthouse's front entrance.

Ken barked a sour laugh. "I wasn't totally sure there was, at first," he explained. "I heard gunfire-*real* faint, but damn if I don't know gunfire when I hear it. I didn't think about it; I just reacted. I took off past the security checkpoint with Nobuo and Takeo, and who knows who else followed us." He smirked cynically. "It was lucky we weren't shot by the cops. I guess the other guys who heard me shout and ran after us didn't make it through like we did." He fell quiet for a moment. "Maybe it would have been better if Nobuo and Takeo hadn't either." Ken turned his head to look squarely at Ryosuke. "I should have called you, aniki. I'm sorry." He dipped his head.

"You reacted," Ryosuke remarked impassively, neither approving nor disapproving. He had brought Kaede out, that's what was important.

"Hey," Ken grunted, attracting Ryosuke's attention as he nodded towards something in the foyer.

Vin wandered over to them, hands in his pants pockets, his dishevelled yellow suit spattered with burgundy spots-dried blood. "Everyone okay?" he glibly inquired.

"No," Ryosuke rumbled back.

Vin seemed taken aback. "Huh? Is Kaede okay? I… misplaced her in the mess."

"It's cool, man," Ken succinctly assured him, not possessing the arrogance to elaborate on his pivotal role keeping Ryosuke's family alive.

"Two of ours gave their lives," Ryosuke detailed. "Furthermore there was a second attack outside, on the motorcade. Many civilian casualties."

Vin sucked a breath in through his teeth. "Shit, that's going to cause some bother." His anxiety was not for the dead and maimed innocents, just for the extra attention from the public and police they would inspire. Like slaughtered sheep, no one mourned them but other sheep and the shepherds. "The cops are already all over me. As usual they threatened to deport me and did everything short of a cavity search… and there wasn't a single woman among them."

"Hah!" Ken chuckled. "You wouldn't date a cop."

"Sure I would. If she was cute," Vin clarified, true to his predictable, shallow protocol pertaining to the fairer sex. "And if I *was* going to get a cavity search, I'd want a woman doing the violating."

Ken slapped his knee at that, his laughter charming several of the Kanagawa Kotetsu men to draw closer and see what had their senior brother in sudden merriment against the tone of the day.

"Oh yeah…" Vin reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pinkish object. "Here." He tossed it into Ken's lap. "Leaving pieces of yourself everywhere…." He sighed like he was the other man's longsuffering mother. "It wasn't easy to snag. Fortunate for you I had the opportunity. Just don't ask me where I hid it."

Ken's mirth was cut off despite Vin's additional joking as he juggled with the object on his lap. He picked it up and blinked at it, then quickly looked at his left hand. "Damn, I didn't realise…" he whispered, staring at the pinkie stump where the prosthetic should be.

"So you lost more than just your weapons," Ryosuke stated. A prosthetic specially designed for yakuza found at the scene of over half-a-dozen murders was definitely traceable evidence. Ken was too careless too often.

"It's not like I can feel this thing," Ken protested, screwing the fake finger back in its place beside the three real digits and then rapping it against one of his thick gold rings on his other hand. "It usually doesn't come off so easy."

"Your nose," Ryosuke said, looking at Vin as blood languidly spilled from a nostril, stemming at his split upper lip, and serving to let Ken off the hook from further reproach.

Vin gingerly touched his face, over bruises and cuts, and then wiped away the blood under his nose. "That little brat fucker," he vehemently cursed, the ferocity of his hateful expression matching the violence exhibited on his pummelled visage. He glared at the red smear on his finger. "It was *them*," Vin snarled, his amber gaze lifting to bore into Ryosuke with boiling intensity.

"'Them', who?" Ken queried, out of the loop on France's resident assassins.

Ryosuke merely nodded to his foreign friend; filling in Ken was for a later time in a safer environment. Noir. He'd personally seen the French woman on the street in front of the courthouse, and with Vin's scuffle against her Asian cohort all doubt was removed-they had followed. Dominique's blunder and Ryosuke's fears were made flesh. He didn't ask if the girl was at least dead-Vin's anger wouldn't be what it was if she wasn't still kicking around. Ryosuke had had a feeling they wouldn't be let off that easy.

The standalone rooftop attack on the motorcade might have been Noir's work, or Soldats. Or were they one in the same? The rockets had been suspiciously timely, coinciding with Noir's assassination attempt and turning the best escape route for Kaede and her escort into a firestorm that could have seen the young woman killed if not for Ken's loyalty to Ryosuke first, over Dominique and her goons. The French assassin had said that Noir were not aligned with Soldats, however it could be Ryosuke had caught her in a lie. Why else were she and the other girl here? For a book of strange medieval poetry? Dominique gave the impression that Langonel's Manuscript was extremely precious, and perhaps Noir knew what she knew about the tome, which had spurred their trip across the sea. They had seemed to want it back in that mansion in Paris. Or more rationally they were with Soldats from the very beginning, and had joined their ally in the street war here in the Kanagawa prefecture, their desire for the Langonel's Manuscript being just an excuse, or simply to deny Dominique something she sought.

Whatever Noir's reasons, they mattered to them only. Ryosuke could have done without the renowned contract killers targeting him and his comrades, but fate had decided differently. The women had skills and plenty more rumoured talent for their underground trade-but they were just another enemy, lumped with Soldats, marked for death. Noir would die just as easily as anybody else would under the gaze of a gun.

There was one pleasantry to be found in Noir's appearance. Dominique and her associates had suffered the brunt of the assassins' arrival, the massacre of her people at last along the same vein of what Ryosuke's losses had been combating Soldats in prior weeks. Ryosuke could almost smile. Dominique herself had nearly become a fatality, and for a too short instant of mixed bliss at the thought of freedom from her and dismay at not inflicting her ruin himself, Ryosuke had believed it true. But alas he had subsequently witnessed her stumble away with his hopes, led in paramedics' and her soldiers' arms, from the battered armoured limousine to later whisk Kaede off home. That woman's time would come. No one lived forever on this side of the law, and old age was rarely the reaper's instrument.

Ryosuke flipped his cigarette between and over his fingers, before tossing it to his mouth, catching it between his lips. "Time to go," he said unceremoniously, the cigarette bobbing up and down with his speech. Vin was the last of Ryosuke's men to be accounted for, and fortunately was alive. Meeting Noir delivered no guarantees, even for one of the Luen Kung Lok triad's best.

Ryosuke stood up and lit his cigarette, then proceeded for the exit, his hands stuffed in his coat's pockets. He felt his brothers at his back, trailing after him. Through the glass doors at the courthouse entrance he noticed the paramedics were gone, surely wheeling out bodies on gurneys in either black bags or under white sheets; sort of the carrion birds for a modern city.

The police inspector that had questioned him glowered as he and his outlaw group sauntered by, as though it were a shock that Ryosuke was smoking in the face of consequences. He was young and yet to realise that they were his rules, not Ryosuke's. Ryosuke was meant to defy them; he only chose when. There were no angels in disguise where Ryosuke tread; there was no grey area, no romantic misunderstood heroes, no matter what anybody liked to think. On his side, in *his* society, there was only the dead and those that had done the killing, and everyone was guilty. People *chose* this life, and they lived ruthlessly by it. And thus the police killed criminals, criminals killed the police, criminals killed each other, and the rest got in the way. Nearly every outlaw like Ryosuke ended their life bloodying a bag or a sheet, or staring at four walls of a prison cell. None could help it. It was the natural order of things.

* * *

Dominique cradled Kaede's head in her lap as the sedan traversed an uneven part of the street, bouncing its passengers in their seats. The car made short work of the road home, barrelling through red lights and stop signs as smoothly as it could, bogged on occasion by unavoidable pedestrian interferences. A police squad car paved the way ahead and another tailed the sedan, their presence providing license for the hasty and uninhibited drive through the city. It wasn't the manner Dominique would have chosen to return to Ishinomori Tower in, but if she'd had the luxury of choice she wouldn't be where she was right now. Besides, to be returning at all felt like luxury aplenty.

Approximately an hour earlier Dominique had woken up to the faces of paramedics hovering over her, and the sensation of hard, rough tarmac digging into her back. And then the pain had come. It was later reported to Dominique that her motorcade had been the subject of two RPG hits- doubtless presents courtesy of Soldats; it was too crude for the surgical instruments Noir are. The blast had knocked her off her feet and into unconsciousness, but fortune had orchestrated her escape from serious injury or even death. Bumps, bruises and a concussion, and not to mention the bullet hole through her arm-that was the woman's tally of injuries for the morning. Not too severe, considering she had met Noir face-to-face. The thought did nothing to dampen the aches and pains, however.

Her sisters had assisted in dragging her away from the wreckage into further paramedic care waiting in one of the ambulances that were suddenly crowding the street along with police vehicles. Some of those sisters had had wounds of their own, but a larger number were beyond what modern medicine could administer. It was not pretty, but the women had died for their cause; Dominique was certain they were at peace in the afterlife.

Her arm was bandaged and in a sling, her deepest cuts had been cleaned and plastered, and a hearty dose of numbing painkillers had been injected into her veins. She had been uneasy throughout the ambulance personnel's attention and dismissed a visit to the hospital, fearing successive attacks from Noir or Soldats while she was out in the open and vulnerable, however none came. Still, Dominique had gathered her able-bodied sisters to guard her, and, chiefly, to watch over Kaede and bring the girl to the safety found at her side. Noir had tested that safety and revealed it to be far from absolute, but it was still the best Dominique could offer. Better than what Kaede's brother and his rabble could muster, in any case.

Dominique's agitation remained with her; she didn't feel it would depart until she had Kaede within the walls of Ishinomori Tower again. The car they were in was meant to be one of their escort vehicles, not one they actually travelled in. The limousine, while intact despite its fiery and explosive encounter and probably still drivable, had been impounded by the metropolitan police for ballistic tests or for evidence or some such annoyance. Dominique would have liked its armour shell around her and Kaede instead of the much more lightly reinforced chassis of the sedan, however better the latter than riding in one of the police patrol cars chaperoning them, as some of her sisters were forced to do. They would stand no chance against a determined Soldats assault, just as their occupants would not.

Fortuitously the police's intrusion stopped there. Nobody that Dominique vouched for had been taken aside to be interviewed in spite of the major incident on official city property and her sisters' obvious bearing of arms and intimate involvement. Mentioning the need for a multitude of translators for all the foreigners in her employ had probably persuaded the law some-and of course her so sadly having no translators she could lend to aid them with their inquiries-but with the paid off courthouse officers, none wearing a badge were likely eager to detain her or her sisters and perhaps have their payoff come to light. The results of the interviews would invariably bring up questions that the public would look to the police to answer, and then their corruption would only be evaded so long. Dominique didn't expect to have to talk to the police at all.

With her unbound hand, Dominique teased a lock of Kaede's hair behind her ear. It was a miracle the girl was here with her now, without as much as a scratch. Dominique wished she could credit Kaede's good health and survival to the loyal defence her sisters' had put up, but she was not the type to delude herself with misplaced optimism. The women had played their part, however it was luck that had been Kaede's greatest ally. And *that* had Dominique very scared. At any moment in the maelstrom she might have lost the child; a helpless babe no less; to a twist of fate that would collide her with a bullet, or have her caught in an explosion. It had been a mistake to bring her outside of her home. Kaede's appearance had been necessary at the district court, but Dominique should have thought of a way around it, to-!

Dominique took a breath, and released it slowly. It was futile getting worked up after the fact. Kaede was all right. They would be home momentarily. She had to think forward; focus on the future that *could* be changed, and utilise the wisdom garnered from past experiences to improve that future.

Kaede dozed, snuggled into Dominique's lap, unresponsive and docile since the attack. Dominique wondered if the girl had any understanding of what had occurred, or if recollection of the events had been ripped asunder somewhere in that muddled mind of hers. Such memories were best suited for forgetting; Dominique wouldn't shed a tear if Kaede could not remember this morning.

Dominique touched her thumb to one pale cheek and drew it lightly downwards. The skin beneath dimpled; it was so soft and silky-so perfect, like hers had been. Kaede's fate would not be like her mother's. Dominique wasn't confident she would survive a second hell.

She glanced surreptitiously at the other backseat passenger, that Dominique wasn't alone with Kaede tainting their quiet time together and the French woman's similarly quiet reflection. Most occasions it was challenging to remember that Fumiko was there; like she was part of the décor or a faceless servant taken for granted; however that the pretty plaything of Kaede's was here in any measure had Dominique's attention, small amount that it was. That Fumiko had lived through Noir's barrage of gunfire was a marvel in itself, but contrary to the drenching of dried blood over her clothes and more caked on her face and caught in her tangled hair, the young woman was astoundingly even without any injury. She sat demurely with her hands in her lap, unfazed by the jarring gory image she presented. She still even had her hat, its frayed bullet-ridden remains placed neatly beside her. It was too bad Fumiko hadn't been wearing it when those holes were created. Kaede could do far better than her.

"Who were they?"

Dominique rubbed her hand over Kaede's neck, letting the girl's heartbeat press rhythmically against it, and then kneaded the flesh between her fingers and palm. The child was awake, in the sense that she was liberated from her deranged torpor for the moment, judging by the steadiness of her voice. Dominique could always tell when it was the real Kaede speaking over the insanity that possessed her; there was a quality to her voice and gestures that harked back to her mother's strong and astute character. In these painfully ephemeral periods of lucidness Dominique wished Kaede would rethink her avid abstinence from drugs; there could be hope for her contained in a pill bottle somewhere, some medication to hold her from the edge of madness. The woman had tried talking her charge around to the benefits of modern medicine, but opposing Kaede too vigorously was a precarious undertaking, even for one as entrenched at her side as Dominique was. Kaede instinctively threw up resistance whenever pushed, and sooner or later resorted to violent means of defiance if continued to be harassed. The child's mind was a mercurial mess, yet changing it when set was almost impossible.

Kaede's question came somewhat as a shock, but Dominique masked it effortlessly, carrying on massaging the girl's neck while chewing over how to answer her. The psychotic haze that had gripped Kaede during the gunfight had not been barrier enough for her attackers to escape memory, or for her to recognise they warranted singling out from the standard Soldats agents. It was not the mercy Dominique had sought. For a second she considered glossing over the details concerning the two assassins that had captured the girl's attention, but relented quickly. She kept things from Kaede when she had to, but it was not too early to reveal the existence, the *true* existence, of Noir the way Soldats knew it to the curious child. It was important for Kaede to understand the peril that Noir was, now that the maidens were apparently united with Soldats in an abomination against everything Altena had valiantly strived for-the peril that Noir was, and the holy avengers they were born to be.

Indeed, hiding Noir's significance might inflict the greater harm.

"They are the Black Hands of Soldats," Dominique narrated just above a murmur. Everybody in the sedan bar Kaede and Fumiko were aware of what Noir was, and with the latter woman's eavesdropping insignificant, talking quietly was unnecessary. However, speaking of the timeless killers invoked hushed reverence, obligatory and inevitable when the speaker *truly* knew them, as Dominique and her sisters did. Noir had appeared as enemies before her and her allies, but they were always worthy of honour and respect. "For nearly as long as there has been Soldats, there has been those that carry out our-their-will with the sword. But they are greater than mere soldiers; more than simple murderers; and more divine than the most devout among us. Their kingdom is death, and they reign over it with an iron fist like no one else can."

"Tell me everything," Kaede said.

* * *

"…was crazy! Like something out of a movie! I didn't know what was happening at first, then suddenly, 'boom'! The loudest thing you can imagine! I ran."

"It was terrible. I saw people running outside, and, ah, I thought it was a fire, maybe even just a drill, you know? Then those explosions. Those people…. It was terrible."

"Where the hell are we, the Middle East? I'm so sick of the damn yakuza bringing their feuds into the streets and getting innocent people involved. Some dumb gangster got himself shot near my apartment last week. I thought *that* was bad. The police have no control over organised crime in this city."

"Witnesses had plenty to say, however the police have yet to comment on this morning's *incredible* violence that took place inside *and* outside Yohohama District Court. Speculation is rife on the perpetrators and the purp-"

Mireille bent down and switched off the television set, shutting up the dramatic reporter, and tossed the remote that had gagged her back onto the kotatsu. She didn't want to hear about this morning right now. It had been far from Mireille and Kirika's slickest operation, but Soldats' stunt had ensured an explosive and brazen finish to it. Breffort had promised her that it was Noir's show here in Japan….

She sighed grimly. Had she actually believed his word for even a second?

She should count her blessings-she and Kirika had gotten out cleanly; always a plus on any assignment. There were plenty of witnesses to Soldats' interference, however no one had seen her or her partner's face to her knowledge; none that could link them to the shootings anyway, or who didn't already know what they looked like. And Yokohama's police could scour all the courthouse surveillance tapes for as many hours they wanted too; they wouldn't find the recordings starring their killers. Noir were as good as ghosts.

The situation had become too hot after Soldats had slapped Ishinomori's motorcade with a couple of rockets, shaking the streets and the Corsican assassin, and by the time the fire engines had started pulling up, Mireille had left the wail of their sirens far behind. There had been a tense few minutes of waiting at the train station for Kirika, each assassin taking their own unique route to the rendezvous point to disassociate themselves from one another in case of tails or onlookers, however the girl had wordlessly appeared beside her tousled but standing. There had been no reason to think her partner wouldn't otherwise, yet Mireille had felt the stress of the wait acutely before reuniting with Kirika. These days Kirika seemed all the more younger and vulnerable, and the danger Mireille put her in all the more menacing.

From there on out, Mireille and Kirika had travelled back to Kawasaki the way they had come; silently in each other's company. With a shared look both had told their respective tales in their longing eyes, of missed chances and narrow escapes; of hearts still beating that should have ceased… and the memory of their faraway home.

Kirika, kneeling on the floor, looked from the blank TV screen to Mireille. "It'll rot your brain," the blonde quipped, pushing the first aid kit on the kotatsu closer to where her partner was and placing the small basin she had just filled with warm water next to it.

Kirika turned back to the television, warily inquisitive, as though it were a rattlesnake that had suddenly shaken its rattle. Mireille wondered what strange thoughts she had ignited in that mop-haired head. Kirika had a tendency to take things she said too seriously, or misunderstood them completely.

Mireille smirked wryly to herself. She supposed that was something of the girl's charm.

Mireille stood up and unbuttoned her lavender jacket and shook herself out of it, letting it drop off her arms onto the floor, and then pulled her shirt out of her skirt. Her pantyhose she had already removed immediately after returning to the Yuumura household-they were scrunched up in the kitchen's bin, streaked with runs, of course. Mireille had never worn a pair that hadn't become a casualty midway through an assignment; she much preferred the sturdier and less intrusive classier alternative of stockings with or without garters. The constrictive nylon trappings were the only option for hosiery as the hem of her skirt climbed, however.

The woman knelt beside the stubby table. "Kirika," she beckoned.

Kirika dragged her bottom across the tatami mats with her arms until she was kneeling in front of Mireille. She was still dressed in her grey suit and her tights-and with not a single tear in the flimsy sheer material. If that wasn't testament to the girl's slick ability in combat she didn't know what was, Mireille thought dryly.

That said, even experts met with injury some of the time, and Kirika had seen a little roughing up during this morning's affair. It was nothing more serious than a bleeding nose, a few bumps and bruises, and a slightly grubby face, but Mireille felt it serious enough to merit her close attention. Needless, the woman's mind had spoke, a waste of time. Pointless mothering to a bloody nose already dried and bruises she could do nothing for, and dirt that the shower could and would better handle. Yet Mireille had still gone through the motions throughout the diatribe, preparing the water and fetching the medical supplies. There was such a thing as thinking too much.

Mireille undid the buttons closing Kirika's jacket and pushed it off her passive partner's shoulders, before taking it away and laying it on the kotatsu. She told herself it was for Kirika's comfort, or even to facilitate her ministrations. When she didn't think about it, it seemed plausible, and the only truth.

The blonde tugged loose the ribbon at Kirika's neck that held her tight collar together, and undid several buttons down her shirt, stopping before it felt as though she were undressing the girl. Mireille lightly soaked a cotton ball in antiseptic retrieved from the first aid kit, and wiped it under Kirika's nose, cleaning the small traces of crusted blood there. Warm water replaced the antiseptic after Mireille had swabbed what trifle facial wounds Kirika had, and the woman painstakingly washed her partner's soiled face with sodden cotton and tender rubs.

Kirika blinked lethargically under the care, shading reddish-brown eyes that grew glassier with every moment and loving wipe. Mireille cradled the girl's chin in her free hand to hold Kirika's slightly lolling head still, and smoothed the cotton wool along her jaw line that framed her cute face. The blonde had realised that her partner was cute the first time she had seen her picture on her laptop's screen so long ago, but up close it dawned on Mireille that she forgot that Kirika was exceptionally pretty…. Beautiful. Staring at her, looking past the youth, the docile nature and the naïve manner, the partner and the colleague, Mireille finally *saw* Kirika. *Truly* saw her, as the gorgeous young woman she was.

Mireille was attracted to the person Kirika was, not particularly to the girl's physical makeup. It was her personality she had first fallen for, her heart and soul and everything else inside that made Kirika, Kirika. On the outside Kirika had been simply 'cute'; Mireille had been conscious of the fact her newly acquired partner wasn't ugly or unattractive, but it had been taken for granted, distant knowledge never genuinely explored. The girl's looks weren't the typical type to 'woo' Mireille, or so the woman had believed at the time; for that matter, Kirika hadn't been her type in any shape or form whatsoever. Her type had habitually been beautiful mature and feminine women around her age or slightly older; independent women like she was, and sometimes even more strong-willed than her with a dash of overbearing. But had they made her happy? Had Mireille really known what she'd wanted at all?

When she thought back to the days and nights of ephemeral relationships and no-strings encounters, Mireille didn't miss them and recognised that she had garnered nothing else but the physical solace from them. What she had with Kirika was so much deeper and more rewarding than the physical realm's fleeting delights and transitory connection; indeed, the two young women had yet to delve that domain to any real degree and still Mireille felt more fulfilled than she ever had with any acquaintance or outright stranger. Of course, she hadn't loved any of them.

Mireille's desire for Kirika stemmed from her heart, but gazing upon the captivating visage before her, that desire unearthed a new font, though one equally laden with guilt and shame at its implications-perhaps even more so, being that much more base… more bodily. Nevertheless, the beauty persisted in front of her, tempting her, stirring her. The feelings were a sibling to those in her breast; they meshed together, different but part of the same, like the raging currents sweeping over the top of deep, still waters underneath. They fed off each other, stoking each other, the desire stronger with the love, and the love enriched by the desire. Glorious…. Without her rational mind telling her so, Mireille would have never known them reprehensible.

Mireille brushed her thumb across Kirika's cheek, just under the girl's partially lidded eye, taking away a stray droplet of water. A touch of makeup would look terrific on her; nothing too heavy that would cloud her already fine features, just a little to bring that innate beauty into clearer focus. Kirika's hair could be styled a bit too, or grown out; that look would be interesting to see. But the adjustments were absent-minded ideas, brought on by Mireille's own pursuit in cosmetics and fashion. If Kirika were to somehow be frozen in time just the way she was now, perfection would last forever in Mireille's eyes.

The cleaning, if that's what it still was, descended to Kirika's neck. The girl's eyes had closed, which was perhaps just as well as Mireille avidly watched warm water roll down the contours of her partner's neck to her chest, then dribble lower still. There were no bra straps on Kirika's shoulders, Mireille acutely observed inside her half-open shirt. That sort of thing simply wasn't proper; however objections were difficult to come by while Mireille sat staring.

Kirika's eyes inched slowly open, seizing Mireille's breath as the younger girl gazed back into the eyes that ravished her. What was going on in Kirika's head was a mystery as usual, but that mystery was a blessing right now. Or did Kirika even understand the heat she saw in her partner's gaze? That thought had Mireille feel even greater discomfort.

The doorbell broke the tension, at least the tension building in Mireille, and it was with zest that she stood up to answer it. That enthusiasm dipped considerably when it occurred to her she and Kirika shouldn't be receiving visitors at the safehouse. A benign though grating solicitor waited behind the front door, or there lurked someone that knew who resided in this house-someone that Mireille might have to greet with her gun.

The door chimed again, summoning Mireille to hasten answering it. She quickly took off the harness holding her gun and its ammunition to her body and after drawing the Walther P99 from the holster, threw the leather straps out of sight. If it really was a door-to-door salesperson or the like, it would not do to spook them with the sight of the pistol harness, something usually only law enforcement wore.

Her gun at her hip, Mireille opened the door a crack; half as far as the security chain allowed; ready for the police, an Ishinomori assassin, or any woman or man with a weapon. However her caution was unneeded, although her hostility might still be in order-it was Jacques on the doorstep.

Mireille lips twisted, but she undid the chain to let him in before walking away, leaving the man to see himself inside. Her frosty reception exposed her back to a Soldats lackey, but Kirika had him in her eye, alert and fully awake now-the blonde wasn't really exposed at all.

"I thought I'd drop by," Jacques said as he shut and locked the front door and flicked off his shoes with his thumbs. "Just to see that you'd settled in."

"How thoughtful," Mireille said, purposely as banal as the Soldats operative's explanation. Jacques had his briefcase, and he was Soldats; a social call was as far-flung as his homeland. The Corsican hadn't expected to see him ever again. "But no housewarming present?"

"I…" Jacques looked surprised for a second, the idiot taking Mireille too seriously, but collected himself while adjusting his trademark black sunglasses on his face. "It… didn't go like we'd foreseen," he said, discarding the congenial airs and getting down to the real reason for his visit. "Plenty of collateral, yet none of the priority targets." He paused deliberately. "Targets we wanted dead."

Mireille sat down beside Kirika, and laid her Walther P99 in front of her on the kotatsu. Since leaving the city she had been trying not to think about what had happened in Yokohama; trying not to let what little was accomplished and the subsequent second guessing that always cropped up sooner or later with assignments of a personal nature eat her up inside. Jacques' appearance put an end to that, but she had to confront reality eventually. She just would have preferred if it had been on her terms, and especially not when she was valuing her privacy with her partner.

"I realise that," Mireille admitted acidly to the interloper. "You saw fit to even try yourself with that ham-fisted attack. It wasn't a help and it wasn't the agreement."

"That wasn't us," Jacques said, sitting down at the table, across from the blonde. He quietened for an instant, and Mireille mused whether behind his dark lenses he was gauging the open medical kit on the kotatsu and its implications. "None of my employer's, at any rate. We would never be so public," Jacques went on, making no further indication that he saw the kit. "Plus we keep our word." Mireille almost laughed at that one. Bitterly and on the inside, anyway.

"And besides, we know how capable you both are by yourselves. I mean, we *thought* you…" Jacques trailed off for his own benefit, with the sense to appear uncomfortable. "Alas, an opportunity I doubt we will get again has slipped through your-*our*-fingers," he continued somewhat more carefully, his diplomacy still shaky. "They'll lock Kaede Ishinomori in that tower of hers for weeks and won't let her peek out a window even."

"Then we'll take her there," Mireille said evenly. "As soon as possible."

"Don't you think *we* would have done that if we'd assessed it feasible?" Jacques argued. "Not with all her allies. The level of security there is just-" His voice raised and one hand swept across the table in exclamation; however he calmed when he realised his excitement. "And it'd be *worse* for you. They *know* you…. They all do."

Mireille looked away and chewed on her lower lip for a moment before restraining herself. She could feel Soldats' grip tighten around her; suddenly feel the strings on her limbs that had always been there. It didn't unnerve her-it was too familiar to. But it did anger her.

"You understand now why her empire, her supports, must be taken out piece by piece," the tool of Soldats spoke. "If just to simply make Ishinomori vulnerable. But her hierarchy isn't strictly a pyramid; pop off the cap and the foundations crumble-every rebel beside her could be another Kaede Ishinomori should she die; another anarch for the zealots. Le Grand Retour…" Jacques shook his head, looking down at the table. "Naïve fools. The world became too complex for that."

"Maybe they aren't completely wrong," Mireille said. She turned back to Jacques, staring directly at his sunglasses. "I know the world would be a better place without *you*."

Jacques snorted. "The world would be chaos without us. The peace we have now is as realistic as paradise gets. It's the people, you see. You should know this, in your line of work. Wherever there are people, there is conflict. It's human nature. And damned if I don't prefer it that way; I'd rather be a brute than lobotomised like the Retour advocates."

Mireille smiled faintly; coldly. "You're all the same to me."

Jacques smiled wanly back. He opened his briefcase, producing a dossier that he slid across the kotatsu to the blonde. "Updated reports on our situation. With your stay indefinite, you'll need them."

"No."

Jacques frowned, confused. "Trust me, the information inside is price-"

Mireille looked at Kirika, who favoured the blonde with her deep soulful stare. "No," the woman uttered again, holding her partner's look. "We've done enough. We attacked, we killed; it's enough." She took a breath and turned her head back to Jacques. "We're going home."

It felt awkward as soon as Mireille announced it; going against her plans, her nature; her good sense. It was a spur of the moment decision determined by emotion; dangerous and not without its price; but what choice didn't have danger? There were *degrees* of risk, her rational mind advised, yet at that second logic seemed to demand unreasonable things from her. She was tired of being pulled where Soldats led; she was tired of Kirika being dragged along with her to share her fate. Mireille's instincts screamed at her; screamed about loose ends, vengeance for Paris, about the possibly fatal ramifications. But none of it seemed worth giving up the control over her life she had just reclaimed, nor did she deem that any of the consequences were insurmountable. She could only focus on her independence, and how it would bring her and Kirika home.

Kirika was giving Mireille a new look, obviously mildly taken aback by her partner's uncharacteristic 'retreat' as it were; however the blonde was positive Jacques on the other hand couldn't interpret past the girl's stoicism, and moreover certainly not while wrapped up in his own much more flagrant show of shock.

"It's *not* enough," Jacques spluttered, his eyebrows lifting above the upper rim of his shades and his hands slapped flat on the kotatsu, as though he were about to lift himself up too. "Y-You're not serious, are you? My employer expects results, I mean, you can't just *leave* a job unfinished!"

"This was never a 'job'. This was Soldats sticking their fingers in lives they should have known to leave alone." What would keep Breffort from insisting that the Soldats council still needed more proof of where Mireille and Kirika's loyalties lay? Soldats would have Noir fighting their battles in Japan until there was no one left they wanted dead to kill, if they had their way. Instead of Altena pulling the Black Hands' strings, it would be Breffort and his ilk. Noir had fought Soldats' enemies; they had killed some. They had punished for the improper use of their mantle. In the eyes of reason, they had done enough. If Soldats wanted more, then their true intentions were beyond doubt… and there wasn't a chance Mireille would abide them.

"You must realise the consequences," Jacques persisted. "You can't just- just-! Not even *you* could hope to live longer than a month, two months, tops! Because that's how long you'll buy! You'll be on the run until they *choose* to erase you from their world!" His protests were clearly heartfelt; Mireille wondered if he felt his own life would be at stake if she and Kirika left Japan permanently. But what he spoke of were still the same vague 'hammer of God' threats Soldats were good for. Mireille had heard it all before, and from more powerful people than Jacques.

"We're not a part of Soldats, and we never were," Mireille said. "If they think to dispute that…" She fingered her pistol. "Then as you said, they'll know where to find us."

Jacques was shaking his head from side to side, gaping, and had started to perspire, a sheen developing across his forehead. "You're smart," he croaked, rubbing his sweaty hands over his suit sleeves. "Be smart about this. It's not just us, but Ishinomori too who'll be out for your blood. They know you just as we do. They'll come for you too, eventually. You…."

He sighed heavily and stood up with his briefcase. "It's not good that I come here too often," he muttered quickly. He kept his head down, avoiding looking at Mireille or Kirika. "I'll send further updates via email. I'll see myself out."

Jacques strode to the genkan and hurriedly put on his shoes. He opened the front door, but stopped with it ajar and his hand on the handle. "You are *them*… *Noir*," he breathed. "You'll always be until you're both dead. You're part of this world, and Soldats…" He exhaled slowly, and at length. "Soldats *is* the world. That makes Soldats part of you. Each of us figures that out, soon enough." He stepped outside, shutting the door after he'd gone.

Mireille looked at Kirika. The girl knelt there, unfazed. She'd follow Mireille into hopeless odds if the woman asked. She'd face the world itself in a violent opera sang with guns and in a bullet ballet danced by killers, as Mireille had considered herself once before when her young partner's life and heart had been at risk… when both of their lives and hearts had been at risk. However to face the world was no hyperbole; Soldats indeed was everywhere, rooted in every level of society and in every nation on earth. All death was certain sooner or later, by the bullet or the blade or blessed old age, yet openly calling down Soldats upon them was tantamount to suicide, or at best sentencing them to live a life even more constrained by peril than the one Mireille and Kirika lived now. In her pursuit of freedom, Mireille might instead throw away the cherished amount she and her partner had.

* * *

There was history in every item; a unique history unheard of among the ranks of most scholars and historians, even the most learned and respected; a saga no less, stretching from the Dark Ages to this modern day and age. The privileged knew it in some shape or form; at least those who had been privileged for long enough; but people like Dominique and her sisters knew it better than anyone. It was people like her and her sisters who had recorded it.

This room was as close to the Manor as any in Dominique's fold could venture; this monument to an illustrious ideal that had rung around the world-would ring again. Encased behind glass were fraying tapestries, faded paintings, tattered books, discoloured weaponry, battered shields, decaying documents-rotting relics from time immemorial, and their worth far more than all the precious metals on earth combined. This room was an alien and ignoble resting place for them, but time had proved it could reach even a timeless place. Some had felt it blasphemy to remove the artifacts, however Dominique and others who had possessed the same fears and reverence as her had taken it upon themselves to save what they could from the Manor, smuggled out under Soldats' noses at extreme risk. Who knew what the old men might have done, when they'd had the gall to lay siege against that sacred ground's unswerving defenders? The Manor and its surrounding buildings and everything within could be pulled down to their foundations now, with the rubble collapsing and sealing off the subterranean levels, and nearby vineyards put to the torch and the blackened soil thereafter salted. Dominique had apologies for no one.

With the importance of the items inside, naturally the room was off limits to anybody who wasn't a sister, even Kaede, despite it being on the penthouse floor where she lived. The glories of Soldats, the *true* Soldats, and their holy warriors weren't for defiling by commoners' eyes, of which there were regrettably many residing in or frequenting Ishinomori Tower.

Dominique would never demean Kaede by lumping her in with the rest of the rabble- namely her brother's ragtag group and Japan's criminal element that she'd had no choice in allying herself with-she was certainly no commoner; she was a sister by her righteous deeds if not already by blood. Yet a sister in all but name was still not truly a sister. In another life she probably would have risen officially to the full title, following in her mother's footsteps, but in this one it was a loftier legacy that saw Kaede's informal early admittance to Soldats' annals. The world didn't need another sister-it needed its champions.

"The world was in turmoil when Soldats was conceived," Dominique said, admiring her predecessors' accomplishments with a fond smile as she walked between the rows of display cases. It was sunset, the flagging golden light filtering through the blinds painting each relic with a deserving hallowed aura. The woman enjoyed touring the room at this time of day just for that. She'd wanted Kaede to experience the same sights, feel the same veneration, and as such had held off slaking the child's thirst for knowledge until now. Temperance and her charge was fickle and trying, however the feat was made significantly easier with Dominique's arm in a sling; Kaede's resultant sympathy and anxiety producing a girl more willing to listen, and accept.

"War in every corner, famine, plague and persecution everywhere else. Religion had failed to unite, but rather was the cause of many of the troubles. We saw that kingdoms could not govern themselves without harming their neighbours, or their own people. We saw religion as an excuse for conflict. We saw wealth as the moral defiler." Dominique stopped where a painting hung, the dull oils depicting a short-haired weasel of a man peeking around behind a throne, whispering into the ear of a contemplative monarch resting his chin on his fist. But lurking behind both, in the shadows barely visible, was a face belonging to a third party. If the work had a title it was lost to the ages, but its meaning was obvious.

"And thus, someone had to govern *everything* as a whole, unbound from Rome's meddling and stifling edicts, and incorporeal, incorruptible, that not the sword or the pen or the coin could interfere. Benevolent-*supreme*."

"I've heard this story," Kaede said, making her own path through the display cases. She touched her hand to one glass pane housing stacks of parchment that declared secrets that could rewrite history books. Squeaks erupted as she walked onwards dragging her hand behind her on the glass. "And I know how it ends."

Dominique smiled faintly, as a teacher would for a conscientious pupil. They'd write their own story, rekindling the triumphs of the first. Their names would be remembered, and their achievements recorded in ink and paint and put on exhibition just as the successes of old were now around them. However, neither woman cared for fame or the past. It was vengeance that drove the change currently consuming Soldats-hatred and sorrow, raw and human. Change was a means to their end.

"Yes," Dominique acknowledged. "Ideas can be incorruptible, however the people behind them…." She combed her fingers down through her hair, and swept the long tresses back over her left shoulder. "People disappoint."

The French woman walked over to where a crude wooden mannequin stood; shielded by glass of course; dressed in familiar garb she had worn herself and still had in her possession. Robes of white under lilac and white over lilac again, gold trim and turned up cuffs and a lighter lavender scarf at the neck. It was present day's livery for the loyal, for the most pious, although it had evolved into this appearance at least a hundred years prior.

"There are always those that have to die for the greater good that they refuse to or are too blind to see. The knife in the dark did its job, but we needed something beyond the crude murderer. Killers as incorruptible as our ideals, yet who did not balk at debasing themselves with the sin they cleansed. Killers who bred such fear that the knife never need be drawn.

"So it was that we grew hands. Black Hands. That was-is-their name. Noir." The rapture on her face was there before Dominique knew it, and in her eyes she saw the past as those sisters before her must have done, wonderful and full of promise-sublime.

"So they're French?" Kaede gathered.

"Not as a rule, but it's accepted the *vision* of Noir was first perceived in what would become France," Dominique said, the child's voice fetching her back to the present. "I apologise but some details are sketchy despite our records, however where the first Noir was conceived there is no doubt." She flourished her good arm around at the artifacts about them. "These items came from that place. The Manor. Ruins now, but back then it had been much more.

"Other buildings sprung up around it as the need arose; living quarters, a grand arena. But the Manor was constant. Yet it hadn't made its start as a manor house; it had been a convent, founded in a remote and rather barren region at modern day France's border, but even there the wars reached. It tore at the hearts of the nuns dwelling there, and at their faith. Faith in God, and in Soldats, for every one of them believed in the ideal. They wept, they prayed. Finally, in their reverie, they saw what was needed. What the world needed."

Dominique moved to a tapestry, one of her favourites if not the most. It showed two women in flimsy robes wielding swords against a huge army, the soldiers, both on foot and mounted, decked out in plate and mail in clear weighted comparison. Hopeless odds, yet looking at it one felt the women would emerge victorious.

"The first were two women; an abandoned urchin and an orphaned noble girl. Why? Do not ask. Perhaps the convent also maintained an orphanage. Perhaps the sisters felt that women's hearts could feel the plight of the world more deeply. Whatever the reason, the Black Hands have traditionally been young women without parents. Saplings to be nurtured into strong trees. The sisters kept them, trained them, and the Mother Superior loved them. The girls would face scorn for their bloody role, lose their innocence, but in the Mother Superior's tender arms they could regain it time and again, murder after murder. The Kind Mother."

Dominique looked over to two crossed tarnished swords erected on a stand. The blades were straight, and long and slender. And still sharp-Dominique had retrieved them from the Manor herself.

"Noir fought armies, or so it was written. Certainly their crusade slew several armies' worth of men and women. When they fell another incarnation was reaped. Noir was immortal."

"Why two?" Kaede asked, stepping nearer to peer at the swords. "Why not three then, or ten, or a whole army?"

"Why not? Two is better than one." Dominique sighed, realising she had dodged the question, and not nimbly.

"But-"

"They had to be connected," Dominique revealed in a rush, wondering if this was the one secret that might have been better to keep from her charge. Too late to second guess now. "It- it was the key. The crucial thing that kept them pure in the darkness when the Kind Mother's affection was not enough. They had to care for each other; their hearts had to be connected. As friends, as siblings…. As lovers was best. With that link, they became an army unto themselves." Dominique was intimate with the strength love could muster. While the girl's understanding was different, she was positive Kaede knew as well.

The room fell silent as its two visitors reflected on their respective understandings, and on the deeds they had yet to fully see through. Oh yes, Kaede knew.

Dominique cleared her throat. "The sisters of the convent slowly… 'reworked' their faith. Christian paraphernalia was replaced by weapons and other tools of battle, and with celebrations of their creation's exploits," she said, walking towards the centre display case. "They'd found something more reliable to believe in-'Noir. This word designates since a distant epoch the name of destiny. The two virgins reign over death. The black hands protect the peace of the newly-born.'" She recited the passage in its native French, which Kaede should be familiar with on account of Dominique and Hikaru's hand in the girl's schooling. Dominique trusted she had stayed in practice.

"As quoted from Langonel's Manuscript," Dominique explained, standing next to the tome in its glass refuge. It lay on a reading pedestal, yet not open to any page. The enlightenment in its words was not for just anybody, not even among sisters. "It chronicles much of Soldats history and beliefs, with detail given to Noir. It is right that we have it." Dominique hadn't entertained the thought of Ryosuke and his shifty, coarse partner succeeding in rescuing Langonel's Manuscript from Soldats' clutches in Paris, however she wasn't about to complain about their stroke of luck.

"I knew I had seen this symbol before, when Big Brother brought it back with him," Kaede said, staring at the book's cover where two maidens representing the Black Hands faced each other holding their swords. "You wear it. You all do."

Dominique unconsciously touched the identical pin on her lapel. "Yes. It sets us apart from what Soldats has become. Until recently there hasn't been a Noir for decades, by *their* decree, though the name has persisted. Oh budding killers would adopt the title, but none understood it or lived up to it."

"Mm… I'd heard them spoken of, when I was younger," Kaede said. That meant during her original stint with the Kanagawa Kotetsu, when its founding leaders were still alive and she was merely another thug, though an especially pretty one, under their command. It turned Dominique's stomach to think about. She'd had taken care of that group's bosses however, after Kaede had at last returned to her family home. Shedding yakuza ties wasn't like quitting a job, and Dominique was protective of Hikaru's only daughter. The fools left in the Kanagawa Kotetsu had even elected Kaede their new leader after the assassinations, although Dominique suspected Ryosuke had something to do with that. "So does this mean Soldats has reconsidered the tradition?"

"I hope not, but I can't be sure," Dominique admitted, rubbing her temple briefly. "They were so against it. However, the present Noir is unlike any preceding it, at least as far as the histories tell. Our order tried to revive the Black Hands, in the hopes they would help us purify the world of its mounting disease. Instead they turned against us, even killing the Kind Mother who had given birth to them."

"Why?"

"You'd have to ask them. Despite what some of your bodyguard might boast, none of us who were at the Manor, where the rebellion took place, survived. But Soldats seemed to distance themselves from Noir afterward, and I had believed the maidens would return to being freelance killers, like so many with the name have lived." Dominique sighed. "A wrong hypothesis apparently, and with a blood price."

"Freelance killers…" Kaede murmured thoughtfully. "So they kill for cash?" The girl bit her bottom lip, and her habitual small smile grew wide, dangerously manic. "Then *we* can buy them!"

"I… don't think…" Dominique started, taken aback. Did she not understand the threat? "They-"

"*We* can hire them and use them *against* Soldats! We just have to pay them more!" Kaede exclaimed, wringing her hands excitedly. "Yes, the world's greed will be their destruction! Set up a meeting. There must be a method for contacting them; something public to the right public."

"My Lady, I must advise that this is…" Foolish? Insanity? What could Dominique say that wasn't like putting out a fire with petrol?

"*Do* it," Kaede snarled suddenly, baring her teeth, then just as swiftly was gleeful again. "They'll accept. It's their destiny to fight for us, and for the *world*! They'll answer our call. If not for destiny, then for the currency they crave. If they don't…" Kaede whirled around, looking at the display cases everywhere, "…we'll string them up here. In this museum. The traitor Noir, come see, come all!"

Dominique swallowed awkwardly. She could sense when Kaede's mind was set, and while bringing up her wounded arm again might cool the girl's passion a measure, it wouldn't sidetrack her. Yet the gears in the woman's mind were already turning, coming together to shape a schematic from improbability that would see the child's will be done.

"As you say, my Lady."

* * *

The light from Mireille's laptop's screen illuminated the woman's absorbed features in the otherwise darkness of the bedroom, the pallid glow washing out her already fair complexion and hair and casting ghostly shadows on the closed curtains behind her. Sleep was elusive, her mind predictably too active, turning the pressing situation in her head and analysing all the angles, all the options, and where each might lead. Needless to say Mireille and Kirika's bags remained open and unpacked at the end of the bed, no attempt to leave the safehouse made just yet. But it meant nothing.

Mireille had taken to sitting up and poking around the internet on her laptop instead of staring up into the night alone with her thoughts, hoping the diversion would settle her. It hadn't, the words and images on the screen going unread and unseen, but the blonde persisted in the façade anyway. Perhaps staring into the monitor's glare would come to tire her out enough so she would *have* to rest.

The motionless lump swelling the bed sheets next to Mireille resembled what she sought-Kirika slept soundly, her own personal troubles not so grave that she could not find peace-peace enough for a night's slumber at any rate. It could not be discounted though that Kirika had her sleeping aid beside her which seldom failed, even when it was wide awake and sitting up. Kirika still clung to Mireille, quenching her need for physical contact through draping an arm and leg around the older woman's near thigh and keeping her smaller body close. Mireille didn't mind of course; her only worries there were that she might rouse her partner from her pleasant dreams.

Such a vision lying adjacent to her should have been diversion aplenty for Mireille, but not tonight, not with this turmoil. Whatever the Corsican assassin decided would affect the girl next to her as well.

Mireille smiled crookedly down at her comatose partner. It was second nature to think of herself and Kirika as a whole, to consider the girl's concerns her own; so different from how the blonde had lived before. She'd always been out for herself, only herself in mind for every decision, and if that was to the detriment of anyone else, so be it.

Mireille rested her head back, almost touching the curtains and the window behind them. She wondered what they'd think of what she had become, of the person she had grown to be. Her mother and her father, and her brother. Would they be proud? Something told her she might not like the answer; she had become a killer after all, in spite of her parents' sacrifice. But at least Mireille had her soul.

She didn't think about her family as much as she used to. Before the Manor, vengeance had kept their memory fresh, but now their faces, their scents, the sound of their voices, had dimmed. It was like Mireille was losing them all over again, however it was a peaceful passing, like their ashes were being scattered to the wind. Perhaps it was their time to go.

Mireille sighed and pulled up her email account on her laptop to cease floundering inside the melancholic quagmire that was not much of an improvement over the anxiety preceding it. She routinely checked her account, purely out of habit since Noir hadn't been active in the criminal underworld in a business sense for some while. If there was longing masked behind habit, Mireille did not confront it.

Mireille tried not to read the email subjects as she went about nominating them for deletion-the next step in her routine-however one stuck in her gaze. It was from Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals. This one she had to read in its entirety.

'Meeting' was the subject, and upon opening the email a concise message following the subject's style was displayed-a time in the afternoon and under it a street address Mireille didn't recognise, but assumed was in Yokohama.

The assassin's right index finger tapped rhythmically beside the laptop's touchpad. She could just ignore it and go back to Paris with Kirika. Ishinomori could very well be asking Noir to come to their own funeral, although they would discover laying the two young women to rest a costly and futile affair. Or Ishinomori could be calling for a truce, but that was probably the most optimistic view. A truce…. The idea angered Mireille, yet she was unsure why.

Mireille clicked back to her email's inbox, glaring unseeingly at the other messages beseeching her and Kirika to bring their talent to the senders' respective causes. The jobs kept pouring in, day after day irrespective that there was no reply. What would she and Kirika be doing if they weren't here now? Lounging in Mireille's apartment, living each day together in peace and quiet as it came? Ideally, but unlikely. They'd be involving themselves in other people's business, making other people's problems their own-making what was personal to their clients' personal to Noir. And for no other loftier goal than the money they would be paid for their services.

But Soldats was already personal. Ishinomori was already personal. Not specifically Kaede Ishinomori, but the people with her. Ryosuke and Vincent, for their actions in Paris… and the priestesses. The priestesses for… for *everything*. Jacques had said that any one of them could rise to be another Kaede Ishinomori, but what about another *Altena*? The priestesses had recognised Mireille in Yokohama Courthouse. They had been involved with her years ago, when she was a child; with Kirika nearly all the girl's life; with the creation of Noir… with the murder of the Bouquet family.

It kept coming back to that moment that had defined the rest of her life. Mireille could feel the emotions building in her heart, reigniting after a long low simmer, threatening patient reason and detached consideration. She could let it go if she wanted. Let *them* go; let the wind carry them away once and for all. Simply pack her and Kirika's bags and leave, and deal with the repercussions no matter how fierce and colossal. They'd survive, hiding somewhere remote, living below even Soldats' radar. Mireille had the money and the means. It wouldn't be a bad existence, and they'd have each other. Yet….

The tune from her father's smashed and discarded pocketwatch played in Mireille's head, haunting her. She had thought it was over. She had been ready for it to be. She had been deluding herself-it wasn't over. Would it ever be, until Soldats was no more? Maybe not Soldats, but Altena's enclave would be enough. It had to be. Mireille knew she couldn't move on while they still lived, while there was any *shred* of that evil woman left. They were more than loose ends to be tied out of prudence; on some level their deaths were *desired*. Not for Soldats, not for Breffort-but for Mireille's family, for herself, and for Kirika. For what those women and the one they had followed had done to two children's lives, and could do again if the fanatical whim took them. For the closure of this chapter of Mireille and Kirika's lives, and freedom forever from their haunted pasts. For *revenge*.

Mireille made a mental note of the meeting time and place, and closed her laptop, sliding it away under the bed. The bags would stay unpacked, the job offers unanswered. When Mireille's head touched the pillow and she closed her eyes, sleep came quickly.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

This chapter was pretty much for plot stuff, and to get characters firmly on the right and believable track, especially Mireille/Kirika. The Noir/Soldats history stuff I just pulled out of the air. I hope it is acceptable! ^.^


	23. Family Matters

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twenty-third chapter. Some necessary plot stuff before the crunchy centre.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 23 - Family Matters

Ryosuke stalked through the halls of Ishinomori Tower, his heavy boots heralding his rapid and inexorable passage with violent clomps against the floor. Anyone who happened to be in his path was quick to remedy that, darting aside as the juggernaut in black strode past, lest they be trampled. He would not care if it came to that, and those in the way knew it-the women encountered in the corridors of what was supposed to be his home were the 'guests' of Dominique, with the viper at the centre of the nest a guest herself, no less. Ryosuke was virtually alone in that treacherous nest, poisoned fangs and forked tongues all around, but he held no fear for himself. That wasn't to say his heart did not harbour it-only the mad or the stupid were fearless, and he was neither-and this morning he was wholly its thrall.

The fear wasn't for himself however, but, as usual, for his sister, afflicted as she was with the mad-induced breed of daring. It seemed Ryosuke was the last to learn of Kaede's reckless if not bordering on suicidal intentions; too frequently was he on the bottom of the grapevine in family matters these days, where news was trickled down from eavesdropping at the right places at the right moments. No prizes for guessing why, of course. He was consigned there at the lowest rung by the one person he had been sure would at least keep his younger sister from physical danger for the time being, if not out of genuine affection then out of practical concern for an asset. Whatever motivation, Dominique had not this time. It left Ryosuke afraid, and smothered in cold fury.

The yakuza's head started to beat in cadence with his footsteps, the jackhammer buried in his skull gradually strengthening and hastening, seeming intent on busting clean through the bone. Through the haze of pain he wondered what he was going to say to Kaede that wouldn't just sound like his temper exploding. She would listen to him, though. She would. This was where he was different to Dominique; superior-he and Kaede had a connection the gaijin could never touch, and never hope to match.

Two of Kaede's compulsory bodyguards-who probably took orders from Dominique over the word of their supposed mistress they protected-stood outside the door to her private apartments, dressed in their prim black suits and eyeing Ryosuke's appearance dispassionately, as though he were the unruly neighbourhood boy come to bother them-a childlike annoyance at best. Every Soldats rebel had likewise caustic stuck-up attitudes when they weren't being aloof; they underestimated anybody not in their little exclusive club, and treated them with matching disrespect. Humility would be a harsh inevitable lesson for them. Yesterday Noir had given them their first taste since their defeat and ousting from whichever part of Europe had originally spat them out, but Ryosuke himself would feed them the full, fatal dose one day.

One of the guards stepped in front of Kaede's door and held her arm out with her hand raised casually, a weary gesture for him to halt. "She's-" the woman began, compliance taken for granted. However Ryosuke did not halt.

The gangster seized the rebel's extended arm and roughly pulled her out of his sight, into her nearby compatriot. Together the women stumbled, scandalised squawks issuing from their throats as they strived to regain their respective balances. Before that happened, Ryosuke had opened his sister's door, audaciously unlocked, and stormed into the room the women so haplessly had defended.

Kaede wasn't the first to live in these apartments. She followed in another woman's footsteps, taking them over after her mother-after Ryosuke's mother-had become mortally entangled with Soldats' machinations. With hindsight and wisdom garnered from his years of separation lurking in the dark corners of Japan's backstreets, it was clear to Ryosuke that Hikaru Ishinomori's end had been preordained. Soldats was like a terminal disease; it took its time, but eventually it went for your life. And the cure…. If there was a cure, it would be found by Ryosuke and his comrades, which tentatively included Dominique and her rebels. They were taking a scalpel to it, carving out the sickness that polluted the world. The gangster did not forget however that Dominique and her women were Soldats too, and had been catalysts for his mother's corruption and demise. It would not be over until *they* were purged from all aspects of civilization as well.

Entering the apartments still jarred the man to this day-he wished his sister would think about changing the décor. The rooms were as he remembered them as a boy, before he'd left Ishinomori Tower in disgust. The colour scheme was gentle on the eyes, while the taste in art was untamed in comparison, garish and angular. It spoke of Hikaru Ishinomori's personality, but mere echoes of it, not enough for her son to understand. She would forever endure as an enigma to Ryosuke. A figure to be despised… and loved. He was still his mother's son.

Kaede was in the living room, attended by her two shadows with their primped hair and made-up faces, and flexible dignity. Fumiko hovered around her owner, devoted in her attention though timid with her touches, while Claire mostly stood back, seeming impatient and begrudged to get any closer. The habitually browbeaten green-haired woman was wrapped in a simple white satin robe, while her shamelessly immoral redhead counterpart wore one of her trademark yukatas virtually sliding from her shoulders. It was blue, crashing waves on the bottom half and eighteenth century galleons navigating the currents on the top, several smashed to jagged lengths of timber; hulls cracked and masts snapped, with white sails in tatters, billowing wildly in the pictured storm. It didn't suit her. Claire was another invading gaijin, an acquaintance of Dominique's in some sense, and manoeuvred somehow into Kaede's bed, slyly playing on Ryosuke's sister's appetites. For what purpose could be speculated at, but none containing benevolence. Claire certainly was no Fumiko; she was a wolf pretending to be a hound.

The slaves were regarded dispassionately by Ryosuke, noted and then dismissed as beneath further thought in a fraction of a second. Fumiko-and when she deigned lift a finger to assist, Claire-were dressing their mistress for the new day. That Kaede was naked before them-and before *him*-was what insisted on Ryosuke's complete attention.

It bid the yakuza freeze for the briefest of instants, likely unnoticeable to anyone watching, but a pause, a *hesitation*, nonetheless. It had been rude to barge in unannounced, especially into a woman's quarters, however Ryosuke was not about to back-pedal now. He wouldn't give Dominique's guards outside or Claire inside the satisfaction of seeing his weakness. Nor could he afford to.

Boldly the gangster slammed the door closed in the Soldats rebels' indignant faces as the women rushed to oppose him once more, angrily this time. Had they been a second swifter he would have smacked their noses-unfortunately their sloth was his loss. He locked the door, just in time to counter frantic turns on the handle, every one of them rendered futile. The women were too prideful to resort to banging their fists against the door.

"Meeting Noir is a mistake," Ryosuke declared in a vehement growl but without fanfare, his eyes pinched as the pain in his head pounded harder reminders of its presence into his brain.

"Big Brother!" Kaede called happily, mercifully only turning her head around to greet him. She was as unconcerned with her nudity as Ryosuke… or at least as he appeared to be. The white-haired man kept his eyes level with hers behind her thick veil of bangs, never tempted to dip to anything lower. The large irezumi tattoo spread across her back and shoulders inherently drew the gaze, but he was unaffected-he had seen it before. A woman with long straight black hair clad in a white kimono and in pallid face paint rode side-saddle atop a sinuous red scaled dragon with a tan underbelly. The dragon's paws whipped over Kaede's flesh with abandon, talons cruel and curved. One set; the right paw's; were silver instead of bone like the others, more akin to knives.

Ryosuke had seen the tattoo before, yes… and didn't want to see it again. It was a stain on perfect skin, a mark of innocence ravaged. She was not meant to wear it. Not an angel like her. Kaede was never meant to have followed him.

There was more than a tattoo of the underworld to tempt the eyes, however unabashedly exhibited or not, some things were sacred. Ryosuke had not hung out with Vin long enough to become *that* depraved. He prayed he never would.

"She is quite adamant," Claire remarked, a smooth and sultry smile coming to her lips for her mistress's protective brother, yet anything but inviting. She moved closer to Kaede, her fingertips gliding over naked curves and dimples, the poorest pretence of a handmaiden clothing her charge. The slut knew her filthy faked affection irked him. "Frightened, are we?"

"Noir are not some street criminals playing hitmen," Ryosuke snarled coldly. "They're international. Old. They have a reputation."

"I am aware of what Noir is," Kaede said matter-of-factly, turning her head away as Fumiko helped her don her undergarments. "I even know more than you do, Big Brother," she impishly teased, looking back over her shoulder a margin as her bra was fitted.

Ryosuke averted his eyes, and he heard Claire emit a light chuckle, probably at his expense. He forced his eyes back.

"I've faced them," the yakuza persisted. He couldn't give up. "Even you've seen what they can do. This is a *mistake*. Soldats must have a contract out on you, and you're giving yourself over on a platter!" Why hadn't Dominique stopped Kaede?

"I'll make them an offer they can't refuse," Kaede quipped, before her small smile broke into wild mania.

Ryosuke wasn't one for laughing. "They are the *enemy*. There's nothing you have that they want. Except your life." Unless Kaede paid for Noir's services with Langonel's Manuscript. It was a sound theory, even perhaps worth pursuing… if Dominique was ever inclined to let the text leave her possession. More like a hopeless theory, then. Better in her hands than in the enemy's, Ryosuke supposed, despite the blurred line between the two. He didn't think he could steal the tome back cleanly from wherever Dominique had stashed it anyway.

"Everyone can be bought," Kaede said, curling two fingers underneath Fumiko's chin. The other young woman didn't react beyond slipping a shirt's sleeve over Kaede's free arm, and sweeping the rest of the garment around her owner's shoulders. "Or coerced. Loyalty for others isn't like what it is between us, Big Brother. Soldats has no honour."

"Why can't I go in your stead? Or… Dominique?" Perhaps Ryosuke could use Noir against the French woman as she had tried to use them against him and Vin. Should she be gunned down at the meeting….

"No. It's *my* idea," Kaede insisted fiercely, whirling around to face Ryosuke. The open shirt covered enough, provocatively though it did. "*Mine*!"

Ryosuke resisted the urge to clutch his head and squeeze his eyes shut-his behaviour would not be fodder for Claire's measuring gaze. He wondered if Dominique *had* tried to argue Kaede out of her idea, only to have failed. His sister was so stubborn. "You're not going." He could be stubborn too.

Kaede's face became someone else's; an animal's-a monster's. Her features twisted from beautiful to repulsive as something dark inside took over. She repeatedly balled her hands into fists while her chest heaved frantically, her nails clawing into her palms over and over heedlessly that Ryosuke expected blood to be drawn at any second. The monster's fury was for him, yet he looked upon it not with fear, but with pity. Inside was his sister, his *family*; this creature before him wielded her as puppet while the real Kaede screamed to get out. Ryosuke would not back down. He would not let Kaede down. He would not submit to the monster.

"I AM GOING!" Kaede screeched, lunging forward to wave her fists at her stoic brother. Behind her Fumiko slowly enfolded her arms around herself and sank to the floor, her eyes vacant yet wide and wild. Claire merely frowned and clicked her tongue contemptuously.

"No," Ryosuke said, glaring.

Kaede trembled, grinding her teeth, and then hammered her fists against the gangster's chest, unfazed by the steel beneath his coat. Ryosuke was equally unmoved in the face of the tirade and frenzied blows. His sister screamed obscenities never meant for her musical voice, and gibberish never meant for anyone sane, but he blocked it out. This wasn't really her. This was Soldats' and Dominique's offspring.

Ryosuke slapped away Kaede's arms then grabbed her wrists as she reeled, hard enough that it might result in bruising, but the strength was necessary against the madly flailing limbs. Her punches were nothing to him, but she would batter her hands bloody if he didn't put a stop to it. Nevertheless, Kaede resorted to kicking and kneeing, Ryosuke's restraint seeming to incense her all the more. Bare feet and knees were no better against steel-this tantrum needed to end.

Ryosuke spun Kaede around and crushed the young woman's back to his chest, his arms holding her body fast and with nothing to do but shout and spit and drum heels against his armoured shins. "Enough," Ryosuke barked in his sister's ear. "Remember who you address."

Ryosuke remained Kaede's rigid prison as she wore her resistance out, the futility of acting like a belligerent child finally sinking in through insanity's murk. Gradually she quietened, and it was a panting, limp young woman Ryosuke soon held.

"At last. That was hurting my ears," Claire commented irritably, earning a glower from the yakuza. The gaijin rolled her eyes and poked Fumiko callously with a toe. "It's over. Get up."

Fumiko did not however, staying balled up on her haunches. Like any good dog, her mood was affected by her mistress's.

Claire released a frustrated sigh. "Whatever," she breathed, looking up at the ceiling.

The suite's door handle was jiggling again, the cowed guards outside probably roused to action, however fruitless, by Kaede's outburst. But to Ryosuke's mild surprise he heard the lock click, bestowing assess to whoever was on the other side. He wasn't surprised when he saw who had joined the guards. When there was trouble, the children always ran for mother.

"What's going on?" Dominique demanded upon seeing Ryosuke restraining Kaede, a keychain still in the Soldats renegade's hand. The sight of the Ishinomori siblings together constantly rubbed her the wrong way. Kaede was not the same as her mother. There was something left of her that Dominique could not infect, no matter the whispers she fed into Kaede's ear. Blood was still the strongest bond of all.

Ryosuke released Kaede, dropping his arms to his sides. The young woman staggered away, latching onto a loveseat to support herself. "A family matter," the gangster said.

Dominique's green eyes narrowed behind her spectacles. Just as she knew what buttons to push with him, Ryosuke knew which ones to push in return.

"Kaede's staying home today after all," Claire said with overblown cheeriness, smirking at Dominique.

"It would be safer," Dominique stated, unaffected by the redhead's taunting attitude. She put the set of keys into her suit jacket's pocket casually, and then brushed her grey-streaked tresses from her shoulder. "But she will go. She *needs* to see them."

Kaede whipped around, her face lighting up, transforming back into the sister Ryosuke had grown up with. But not for him. She bounded across the room, shamelessly enveloping Dominique in her arms and pressing a cheek to the older and taller woman's chest, the rest of her barely clothed body following.

Claire snorted and folded her arms, finding interest elsewhere in Hikaru Ishinomori's abstract oddities on display, yet Ryosuke maintained his deadened vigil in spite of wishing to turn away too. He had to watch this. He had to remember what was on the line. But he sought no reminder of why he loathed Dominique D'Aubigne.

Dominique became a different person too, her frosty, wooden features warming and relaxing as an indulgent smile blossomed on her face, even her eyes starting to soften and shine as she looked down at Ryosuke's sister. The gaijin smoothed a hand over Kaede's hair, the other in a sling gingerly going to her waist, answering the other woman's misplaced affection. And Ryosuke watched; visions of their mother in his mind, and hate in his heart. He'd save her. He'd *be* here this time. Daughter would not become the mother; Ryosuke would not mourn Kaede Ishinomori as he did Hikaru Ishinomori.

"You cannot be serious," Ryosuke rumbled scornfully, the torture in his head now from a new font, his migraine missed and welcomed to come back and take its place.

Dominique lifted her gaze, the pitiless, calculating eyes reappearing for the gangster. "You cannot understand," she retorted, haughty with whatever inside knowledge she had, whatever schemes she had in motion. "Some things must be."

"Big Brother, I'll be okay," Kaede naïvely assured Ryosuke, turning from her other puppeteer's chest. "You better stay here though, Fumiko." She broke from Dominique, walking over to the still huddled woman and squatting down to her level. Kaede touched the side of Fumiko's face delicately; fingertips only, the gentle and compassionate girl again; although she could have slapped it and gotten no more reaction. The outside world and those in it were as figments of a faraway dream to the slave, still mesmerised by whatever ailment muddied her mind. Kaede didn't seem to notice, or did not care. "*You* must stay safe. Not like yesterday. You'll stay safe. Here."

"At least wear it," Ryosuke sighed, it feeling more and more pointless standing there. If he had to concede, at least it was not to the monster. At least he'd be with his sister this time, right by her side. Like the old days.

"Mm," Kaede absently replied, engrossed in combing her fingers through dark green waves, tucking locks behind her pretty dog's ear.

Ryosuke spared a last bitter glance in his sister's direction, and then stormed past Dominique, sparing her nothing at all. Blood, *family*, was stronger than anything. He wondered how and when Dominique had become as family.

* * *

"There."

Mireille didn't stop, but walked onwards as though nothing of interest was ahead on the opposite side of the street, the woman mingling with the other pedestrians, one with their flow. The sidewalk's throng was Kirika's to swim as well; she let the current take her while still sticking beside her partner, two droplets in a river. They moved with the will of the mob, but the assassins' eyes moved independently, steered past the people that hid them to what they were here for, taking every nuance all in.

Mireille's murmur had been low; a breath, almost stolen away in the footfalls and chatter of dozens around them, and while Kirika gave no indication she had picked it up, she had heard. It was unnecessary however, although the pleasant quality of her love's voice was never unwelcome; like caresses for the ears, tantalising the sense, the woman's mere speech a melody in itself. Ishinomori hadn't tried to conceal their presence. You could tell the meeting place-a café or restaurant of some kind-by the number of alike black cars parked at the curb just outside. Familiar women in black suits loitered beside the sedans too, and not in a fashion that could ever be mistaken for casual. They were on guard, and waiting-waiting for Kirika and Mireille.

Kirika wasn't sure about this. Heading into a situation where they were literally expected at a certain time and in a certain place by people who had demonstrated they would do them harm was a serious risk. Meeting unknowing victims face-to-face was one thing; while still with its share of danger, through subterfuge and a silver tongue like Mireille's information could be gleaned that might help bring about eventual deaths; but this was akin to stepping onto a landmine you knew was there and hoping it didn't go off. Normally this would never be, not even entertained by the teenager's counterpart, however the assassins' identities, their faces, weren't in need of protection. This enemy knew Kirika and Mireille-knew them intimately. Maybe that was why they were here, because of that intimacy. Noir was tied to this enemy, and every thread was black.

Kirika questioned meeting the Soldats rebels, but she didn't question Mireille. The dark haired teenager's concerns were for herself alone to ponder and fret over. She trusted Mireille. And she trusted herself if the landmine proved live.

[You're curious too, aren't you? It's natural. They're like blood.]

Mireille turned into a store as though it was her whole purpose for being outdoors in Yokohama, and Kirika smoothly followed, the girl aware that there certainly was purpose in all of the blonde's decisions, though it wasn't usually what outsiders believed.

The shop sold books; rows of racks at chest height filled to bursting with magazines, comics, and books. Every publication was glossy or brightly coloured; like the magazines Mireille bought at home and that Kirika sometimes read afterwards; only with loud Japanese script on the covers. Mireille wouldn't buy any of these if she couldn't read them, but the woman hadn't really come inside to browse for reading material. Over the racks lining the book store's front window and almost directly across the street was a relatively clear view of the café. Like the book shop, the café's front façade was clear glass, and easy to see through. Unfortunately priestesses boldly stood all but shoulder-to-shoulder in the café's window-some facing front and some with their backs to the glass-thwarting a clean line of sight inside the building. Perhaps Ishinomori worried about gunmen or women armed with long range rifles, or perhaps it was who would soon be within the café that the group feared. They should have just selected somewhere enclosed, without windows. Was the open, public locale meant to appeal to Kirika and Mireille? Being surrounded and outnumbered wasn't inviting; a window and plenty of bystanders didn't change that. Maybe that was the plan; surround Noir, outnumber them, then hope to kill them. Broad daylight and in public weren't always the shields people thought. But it was *hope* to kill them, wasn't it. Being in public and in broad daylight wouldn't put off Kirika either, if it came to that-if it came to defending Mireille.

The assassins joined the other customers skimming over the racks, merging with the normal, the mundane; the overlooked. Ishinomori knew they were coming and it did make it somewhat harder, but Kirika and Mireille could still blend when they desired, especially if they kept a cautious distance.

Mireille plucked a magazine from the rack; a smiling woman was on the cover, surrounded by Japanese kanji; and flicked slowly through it, her handbag left dangling from her forearm. Her eyes seldom even looked at the pictures. Instead she gazed over the top of the magazine, scrutinising the café and the Soldats renegades inside and outside of it. She was conscious of the risks as well.

Kirika quickly picked up a magazine too and opened it to a random page. She blinked when photos of girls roughly her age in school uniforms, swimwear, and underwear assailed her vision. There wasn't anything to read, just the pictures to look at. A lot of the clothing didn't even fit right, the way it was slipping from the girls' bodies. It wasn't like Mireille's fashion magazines whatsoever. Kirika mused whether this was how people her age modelled apparel. Mireille did seem to enjoy seeing her in a variety of outfits when they went clothes shopping. Maybe the woman would like to see her in her old school uniform again, or in undergarments. Then again, the blonde hadn't had her stand around in underwear before. Maybe Mireille didn't like that. Kirika wasn't sure if she liked it either; not the standing around part, but the looking itself. She actually didn't find much appeal in her love's magazines beyond the thought provoking though peculiar articles. If the people in the accompanying pictures weren't Mireille, they and all the fashion they exhibited were wasted on the girl.

Fifteen minutes of tediously flipping through the photobook later; fifteen minutes past the hour Ishinomori had arranged to meet; Mireille replaced her magazine in the rack and lightly brushed her fingertips along the back of Kirika's hand. Immediately the fine hairs there stood up, the tingle left behind from the delicate, fleeting touch enveloping the teenager's hand, heightening its presence at the end of her wrist, as though it no longer belonged to her. Kirika couldn't help rubbing it with her other hand, soothing the nearly painful sensitivity to something more normal.

Electrifying Kirika's skin wasn't Mireille's intention; it was the signal that the blonde had seen enough of the café and they were on the move again. Kirika stuffed her thick magazine into the rack and trailed after her partner, before matching pace beside her.

They crossed the street when others did, minimising their exposure on the road, appearing in the midst of many rather than two alone. It looked like Mireille had seen nothing to have her rethink going through with the meeting. Kirika hadn't caught anything telling either in her periodic glimpses of the café and the priestesses within and without; there wasn't unease at Noir's tardiness, no extra faces emerging to discuss the assassins whereabouts, no new cars pulling up-only the unceasing patience. Kirika hadn't anticipated more, and no doubt Mireille had felt likewise. This was Soldats. Their traps sprung precisely when they meant them to.

Kirika's and Mireille's eyes shifted sidelong down the alley running alongside the café as they walked by it, in the split second glance filing away what they saw to memory-a rear entrance-single door-and more priestesses outside of it; four of them. The women had seen them pass, and were probably alerting everyone else via radio that Noir was here. There was no point in secrecy now in any case. The assassins were too close to continue that.

The guards by the sedans merely looked impassively at Kirika and Mireille as they approached, while neither of the young women deigned to bother looking back. Or so it might appear. In reality Kirika held the dark-clad priestesses in her peripheral vision, ready to seize her weapon should they do so theirs first. The girl's hands were in her parka's pockets, her right loosely around the Beretta M1934 inside.

A priestess held the café's door open as Kirika and Mireille neared, and then let it swing shut once the pair had entered. It was eerily hush inside. Kirika's eyes went for the threats first-the women in black scattered around the room, sitting at the round tables or standing about, mostly at the windows; the scruffy men at other tables by themselves, some slouching against the walls or the shop's counter. And of course Noir's targets; Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu, the duo amongst the men, and Kaede Ishinomori, sitting at a table with two other women; one a priestess with her arm in a sling, and one dressed very different from all the rest.

Next Kirika's eyes saw that there were still normal customers at their own tables, their anxious faces, dead silence, and refusal to look up from their desserts revealing that they knew something was up. They ate their ice cream mechanically, likely tasting nothing. Those that had finished dared not leave their chairs, pantomiming that there was yet something more to scoop up from their empty glassware. That they were there was promising, however. Kirika would have been put more on edge if it had been just her and Mireille and the Soldats renegades. The half-a-dozen or so witnesses would have to be killed too if Ishinomori elected to attack. Again, they were a paper shield, and probably here for Noir's comfort. Nevertheless, it was something.

Finally it was the shop itself. Iced treats were the only thing the patrons ate; the counter at the far end of the shop was full of trays containing various flavours of ice cream. Appetising pictures of cones stacked high with scoops of ice cream and sprinkled with a range of toppings were the walls' decorations, and above the counter a picturesque menu spoke of the cool desserts on offer. It was an ice cream parlour.

Two guards stepped in front of Kirika and Mireille, barring their way onwards. The rebels held their tongues, but the assassins understood what they sought.

Mireille raised an eyebrow and then her arms, her handbag suspended prudishly from her fingertips in her left hand. A priestess felt along the outstretched limbs-unnecessarily so, Mireille's arms were left bare by her top-earning a glower from the blonde, then her hands followed the curve of the armpits to Mireille's torso, smoothing over her chest and hips. Mireille didn't look pleased. It was pretty obvious nothing could be secreted inside her skin tight outfit, unless it was a small handgun or blade under her short skirt, high on the inner thigh. But that would be kind of awkward to reach in a firefight. Regardless, the priestess even checked under there.

The other priestess looked down at Kirika, and the petite girl merely looked back, her face blank. Kirika's hands stayed in her pockets. With a hint of apprehension-scarcely there, but there nonetheless-the woman began feeling over Kirika's slight shoulders and down her arms, then fit her hands in the space between the limbs and the teenager's body, patting over her ribs. Eventually the priestess arrived at the parka's pockets and Kirika's hands within, pressing her fingers over the bulge at the girl's midsection. Kirika kept her hand covering her small pistol, and subtly manoeuvred it away from wherever the woman's searching touches landed with her middle finger and thumb, so all the guard encountered was more flesh, bones, and parka. She didn't need her gun to protect Mireille; however surrendering it before she had to was irrational. Better to have it than not.

[You'll need it. One day.]

"Open the bag. Please."

Kirika glanced over at Mireille and saw the guard with her gesture at the blonde's pink and white striped handbag. The guard would have no bother finding what she was looking for in there. Mireille wouldn't like that.

"You invited us, and this is the reception? I'm sure you've all kept your party favours," Mireille said matter-of-factly, but with an edge.

Kaede and the bespectacled priestess sitting at the table beside her bent their heads close to one another, whispering. A moment later, a snap of the priestess's wrist shooed the guards away from Kirika and Mireille. The women complied immediately, swiftly retreating without a word or further harassment against the assassins. Kirika looked back to the greying priestess who had given the order and marked her as someone important-a priority target.

"Oi~!"

The man's outcry brought most heads turning to him, although he said no more. He was seated beside Vincent, with Ryosuke leaning against a pillar nearby. He, and the rest of the men in the ice cream parlour, doubtlessly came from Ryosuke Ishinomori's yakuza family, the Kanagawa Kotetsu. It was Ryosuke himself who had quietened the almost bald gangster's hostility against Noir keeping claim of their weapons, rapping two knuckles on his shoulder, looming over him.

One of the heads that hadn't turned was Vincent's, even though he was the closest neighbour to the yakuza. Instead he was fixated on Kirika, his gaze never moving from her. The girl recognised the hate in his eyes… and the day old cuts and bruises on his face. She regarded him emotionlessly, neither afraid nor provoked by his angry glare. She had seen it before, in many eyes; eyes that saw no longer. They'd shared the same experience in the courthouse; however Kirika didn't feel anything of the sort for Vincent. She didn't feel any emotion whatsoever when she looked at him. He was just a man. Just a man she'd yet managed to kill. He'd die one day, like everyone else had, his ire proven worthless.

[Everyone dies. It's the universal fate.]

"Come here, come here!" Kaede enthusiastically beckoned, motioning Kirika and Mireille to approach with waves of her hand. There was a pair of empty chairs at Kaede's table, reserved for Noir.

Mireille sat down with much more subdued enthusiasm than what Kaede displayed, knees together and her handbag held with both her hands on her lap. Kirika plopped herself down in the spare chair without a thought, although her eyes freely roamed the other women across the table.

Naturally Kaede Ishinomori was the strongest lure for her gaze. Kirika had seen her at Yokohama District Court, however not this close up. The gangster was smiling at the girl, occasionally spooning somewhat runny vanilla ice cream into her mouth from a dish in front of her. Snow white bangs curtained her eyes, the same shade as her melted dessert. Kaede had shed her suit for a coat like her brother's, jet black with a high collar and sporting dozens of buckles and straps. The assassin wondered if the coat was a sister to Ryosuke's as well, parallel in more than just looks.

Propped against Kaede's chair, tricky to notice behind the table and veiled under the woman's dark coat tails, was a black curved sword in its sheathe. A katana. Kaede's, Kirika suspected with near absolute certainty. Edged weapons could be deadly in the right hands; that was true for almost any object; but a sword's stroke was no competition against a bullet. Weapons evolved with the times; those people who didn't do the same soon became as dead and gone as the past. For Kaede to still wield a katana she had to surely be a master, or simply waiting to be put down by a better armed adversary. Most likely Kaede was looking at those adversaries right now.

The strange clothing on the woman sitting on Kaede's right attracted Kirika's curiosity rather than the woman herself drawing the assassin's critical dissection. Kirika had seen the clothing only in magazines and on television shows before, and solely those from Japan. It was like a robe, like something Mireille was prone to don after showering in the mornings and evenings. Kirika wasn't positive, but it felt out of place here in the city. The black and blue robe was striking however, vividly portraying a rough ocean and boats being tossed around.

The woman herself had dark red hair the colour of crusted blood that tumbled from her head to just past her shoulders in opulent spirals, as though she were wearing fiery bees' nests. Her makeup was abundant and loud, dominating her features rather than accentuating-Mireille could teach her much. Her perfume too was overwhelming, heavy and pungent that Kirika could smell it from across the table, and wasn't a scent she cared to smell at length.

The woman sat with her arms folded under her chest, her big breasts pushed up and nearly out of her robe. She didn't seem happy to be here, and barely paid Kirika and Mireille more than a cursory once-over. She sat beside Kaede though, which meant she was important, just like the priestess who had Kaede's ear at her left.

"I'm glad we could meet in a more civilised manner," the priestess remarked, her speech precise and devoid of passion.

"Fortunate for you we could meet again," Mireille said, smiling thinly.

Kirika's brow furrowed a little. Her partner and this woman had history. Kirika looked closer at the priestess's sling; a scarf printed with the likeness of peacock feathers in actuality; and the arm it cradled, musing if the wound the limb bore was a gift from her love.

"Yes," the priestess replied simply, the reciprocating smile barely present on her lips. "I am Dominique D'Aubigne. I'm sure you recognise Lady Kaede Ishinomori."

"I'm Claire. A pleasure," the redhead brusquely broke in, before turning her head away again, staring off at the posters of ice cream while Dominique shot her a momentary withering look.

"You are Soldats," Mireille abbreviated.

Kaede's fist crashed down upon the table, shattering her ice cream dish, pieces spinning off onto the floor. Shocked gasps arose from several customers, before their outbursts were quickly reined in. Kirika almost drew her pistol, and in the corner of her eye she saw Mireille's hand halfway inside her handbag.

"WE ARE *NOT* SOLDATS!" Kaede raged, her fist remaining on the table, grinding the glass underneath, white vanilla streaks trickling down her black glove.

"Calm yourself, child," Dominique said evenly, but her face was pale. "They do not know."

Slowly, Kaede's fist uncurled and her arm drew back from the table. "I need more ice cream," she said softly. "Big Brother!" she pleaded, turning in her chair towards the parlour's counter, where Ryosuke was. When Kaede turned back, it was to face Kirika. "Do you want some?"

"She doesn't want any," Mireille answered. Wary of poison, Kirika guessed. She was right to be cautious. The ice cream probably didn't taste as nice as that found in Paris anyway.

"Doesn't she have a tongue? You speak for her?" Kaede said, the rage easing back into her voice and mannerisms, her expression stiffening with every word.

Mireille's mouth opened to respond, but then Ryosuke came, the blonde's eyes darting to him, watching carefully. He was armed with only a fresh dish of vanilla ice cream however; three scoops. He slid it across the table to his sister, and went back to his men without pause or a look back.

Kaede's grin widened and she seized the spoon sticking out of one scoop to dig into the rest, her accusations for Mireille apparently forgotten.

Claire grunted, but when Kirika looked at her she appeared as though she hadn't uttered a thing or moved a muscle.

"You… are Noir," Dominique said, unflustered by Kaede's take to distraction. The priestess's tone was almost faraway, light and dreamy. "Corsica's Daughter, and…." Her gaze went from Mireille to Kirika. "…You."

Had Kirika ever had a name before awakening? Had anyone known it?

[It doesn't matter. The nameless can't be found. They don't exist. They are untouchable by anything. *Anything*….]

The voice was Altena's, but the tone was unlike hers. It wasn't a spirit of a dead woman who spoke to Kirika. It was the reflection of herself-the nameless. The darkness.

"This is not a destiny that was ever intended for you," Dominique continued. "Whatever happened in the Manor… with Altena…." She turned her head away, down at her injured arm, touching her elbow for a moment. "This is not your path. You are… *greater* than this. The old men are unworthy of you. You-"

"We aren't here because of them," Mireille interrupted, coldly. It wasn't strictly true, but Kirika understood. They lived for themselves. They tried to.

[Freedom? There will never be freedom. Family is forever.]

"No? You seem to do as they would bid."

"You came to *us*. *Noir* came to us," Mireille said, her eyes shifting to Ryosuke and Vincent at the other side of the ice cream parlour. Kirika could detect the icy fury building in her partner. "Before *then*, we didn't care."

"A misunderstanding," Dominique explained away, her voice layered in silk. "But you're here now, and a side must be chosen. We are not the Soldats you know. We are…" She glanced at Kaede, and Kirika glanced at the young woman as well. She was still eating her ice cream. "We… want to bring them down."

"And change the world, I presume? You sound like them."

"But we are not them," Dominique serenely assured the antagonistic blonde. "*We* see the sin they carry. They have let themselves become affected by the world they were entrusted to govern. They have forgotten why they hold the position they do. They have become the sinners. If the world must change for it to be righted; for them to be *punished* for their betrayal; then so be it." Her emerald eyes were alight for the first time since the meeting began, Kirika noticed. The woman believed what she'd said.

[They always did. They always believed they were right. The greater good is a sinner's excuse. A noble goal is not noble if it's reached from the black path. Sometimes sin simply must be done; dressing it as virtuous is self-delusion. No one is righteous, least of all those who command sin be cleansed with sin. Their hands may not be stained, but their souls are.]

"We don't want to change the world," Mireille said softly, unmoved by the priestess's quiet passion. "We just want to live in it."

"You are an important piece of the gameboard. You cannot be ignored by either side," Dominique gently insisted. "You have to decide where you will stand."

"We know where we stand-*alone*."

The Soldats rebel's shook her head slightly, her long glossy sheets of black hair; marred by a handful of grey threads; catching new light and shimmering. Her eyes were almost pained, glistening with sympathy. "You don't have to be. Come back to us. We are your home."

"I *had* a home," Mireille darkly declared. "It was taken from me."

"We've all lost something; someone…." Dominique began, attempting to commiserate. Kirika recognised it was useless. There was cold hate in Mireille's eyes, and it was not impotent like other people's feral anger. There was a vow in it, and Kirika knew her partner was capable of living up to that vow.

"I don't care about what you've lost. *You* took my home away." The blonde's nails were digging into her handbag. Kirika's right hand, still in her parka's pocket, closed around her Beretta. It would be a perilous fight, driven on pure reflex and skill, lasting ten to fifteen seconds at the most. Kirika was all but destined to be bleeding by the end of it-the space was too open; the opponents too many. Mireille on the other hand…. The girl would see her love through unscathed somehow. "You killed my family."

Dominique's words momentarily seemed to run out. She blinked once in the abrupt silence, but that one time was telling of her surprise. Perhaps she didn't think Mireille would remember; the woman had been young. But even Kirika had come to remember, and she had been younger. Their earliest exposure to murder, to the darker world underneath the innocent one they had been born into and had believed reigned before that moment; the day their lives had been shaped in its sinister image-of course they would remember. Kirika didn't want the memory; even though it was not truly hers, and even though Mireille had forgiven her, it still stung. Forgiveness had lessened the hurt, but it had not healed it utterly. She would carry it forever, just as she carried Odette Bouquet's last words with her, in her heart.

"The… Bouquet's…" Dominique murmured, frowning, somewhat unsure.

"Nothing you say can make me forget I loved my parents and brother."

"Yes, your parents…. Unfortunate. It pains me. I recall if only they had not been so attached, learned to let go for-"

"They were *parents*," Mireille cut in harshly. "They loved their daughter as they should have. And they died for it."

"The Manor…" the priestess breathed, maybe finally realising the root of the blonde's bitter enmity. "Altena-"

"-Sealed your fate long ago," Mireille finished. "I didn't come to negotiate. You'll always be *them*. You may dress different, but underneath you're the same-the same as *her*. All blind conviction and 'justified' *evil*. Did you ever think that the world doesn't *want* your change?"

"You've fallen farther than I could ever have imagined if you're siding with them," Dominique breathlessly proclaimed. Claire was grinning at her, seeming to at last take an interest.

"We don't have a side," Mireille said, briefly turning her head to look at Kirika. Afterwards the woman stood up slowly, careful to keep their watchers' weapons in their holsters. "But at least they knew to leave us alone."

Kirika got to her feet as well as the blonde turned to go. She kept a grip on her pistol and her eyes everywhere. It only took one priestess or yakuza to reach for their weapon.

"Family-you're stuck with what you're dealt."

Kirika looked back over her shoulder and saw Kaede wiping wayward ice cream from her mouth with the back of her hand. Her posture was different; less hunched over the table and more upright; and her smile was smaller, sly and controlled. Her voice was firmer too.

"Repeating the same mistakes," Kaede went on. She carefully put the spoon still in her hand down, resting it on the ice cream dish. "Your family will be the death of you."

Mireille didn't react beyond a glance; icy and uncaring.

"I suspect this will be the last time we'll see each other," Dominique remarked, her aloof composure regained.

"No. You'll know when it's the last," Mireille replied ominously, and then headed for the exit.

The priestesses minding the sedans kept their eyes on Kirika and Mireille's backs as the two young women departed the ice cream parlour and the doomed meeting. Kirika stayed wary, but felt relieved to be outside on the street again. The meeting, however unconstructive, had gone favourably in the girl's opinion-it hadn't broken out into shooting. It was the best anyone could have hoped for. Mireille would never compromise with Soldats; the Soldats Altena had birthed, that was. It was strange she had even bothered to accept the invitation, but the blonde had had her reasons, whatever they had been. She hadn't shared them with Kirika, and the girl didn't expect that to change after the fact, nor did she venture to ask. Mireille's motivations were no whimsical thing but important to the woman, well thought out and ultimately for the greater good. She wouldn't have taken this risk lightly. Kirika didn't need to understand everything to trust her partner, and shield her should her motives lead her into danger.

"So it's that simple-revenge."

Kirika and Mireille stopped in unison at the ice cream parlour's alley, looking straight ahead as other pedestrians filed past. They had known he was there, waiting for them. Kirika's thumb pulled back on the hammer of her Beretta, and she subtly shuffled half a step backwards, just enough to line the barrel up with the man slouching against the passage's wall, past Mireille's abdomen. She aimed for his temple, where black leather didn't cover.

"I knew this wasn't about a book." Ryosuke sighed and blew a wisp of smoke through tightly pursed lips. "Sometimes I think revenge is what makes our world go round. Not money, not power, but simply an eye for an eye. Old as dirt."

"If we could let go that easily, we wouldn't be human," Mireille said, her faint smile rueful.

"No, we would be angels," Ryosuke replied, before bringing his cigarette to his mouth again. "You killed my people."

"You killed mine."

Ryosuke snorted gruffly. "And so it is again. The cycle."

"We'll see you at its end," Mireille said, before walking onwards into the crowd, becoming part of them. Kirika joined her.

Mireille's forgiveness was a precious thing, not easily given. Kirika had it; maybe she was the only person who could ever say that-the blonde granted it to no one else the teenager had seen or known. Mireille was ruthless in her judgment, and just as apt in delivering it.

[And yet she forgives you. How? How…?]

The fading voice sent unpleasant tremors through Kirika's stomach, leaving her queasy. The girl knew the answer, but the darkness warped it, inciting questions she never thought to ask, bringing up emotions that weren't hers. Her other self had the insight of a longer life, but a bleak, hollow life that it tried to fit into Kirika's like a serrated blade fit into flesh, cutting the image of herself the girl had with every attempt, forcing it ragged. They were two different people.

Kirika hoped that were really true.

* * *

"Be careful of the dry ice inside," Mireille said while bent over to unzip her black leather boots, Kirika already in her socks trotting ahead into the living room with the ice cream.

"Mm," the dark haired teenager mumbled as she put the crinkled white paper bag on the kotatsu and sat down, shimmying forwards so her crossed legs were under the table.

Mireille hadn't overlooked Kirika's quiet fondness for the creamy dessert, and during the deliberately convoluted way back to the safehouse the blonde had popped into the next ice cream parlour she'd seen to treat the girl, no doubt to make up for her missing out at the Ishinomori meeting. Kirika felt her partner sometimes got so wrapped up in her thoughts that there wasn't any left in the blonde's head for her, yet it was these moments that demonstrated how far from the truth that was. Mireille did remember. She did care. Every time Kirika realised it once again, it was like a renewal of self; her existence validated, her place in the world marked out indisputably. Mireille was all she lived for. Mireille didn't have to feel the same, but when it showed that she did, it made the life Kirika had dedicated to the woman wonderful, and worth living.

Kirika unrolled the top of the bag and opened it, before lifting out the two tubs of ice cream one at a time. Cookies and cream was for herself, and strawberry was for Mireille. Mireille didn't often indulge; that she would be joining Kirika in the girl's small joy was a treat in itself. That they would be experiencing the same thing at the same time in each other's company; somehow it was thrilling to Kirika. Sharing something together, however ordinary, caused her to feel inexplicably closer to the blonde. That they were the same in some way, maybe. That there was something connecting them.

Kirika took the pair of plastic pink spoons out from the bag and laid one on top of the strawberry ice cream tub, then pushed the tub to the left side of the kotatsu for Mireille's arrival. The woman walked over unhurriedly, tiredly rubbing the back of her head and mussing her flaxen locks slightly, before placing her handbag on the table and sitting down, tucking her legs underneath her. Her bare toes tickled Kirika's knee ever so lightly, but like all of her love's touches, it was cherished and all-consuming.

Kirika gingerly prised the lid from her ice cream tub while Mireille wasn't as tender handed, flicking her ice cream lid off with an impatient thumb. They ate at their leisure, savouring their respective flavour and the tranquillity found in quiet. Kirika wished her life would always be like this, but she wasn't so naïve that she didn't recognise that was becoming more and more a permanently unreachable dream. Sometimes the two worlds intersected however, the light and the darkness, letting her have these peaceful moments. Kirika didn't take a second of them for granted.

"Let me have a taste of yours."

Kirika blinked several times at the request, looking at Mireille then down at her ice cream, then up at the blonde again. Chagrined to have dithered, Kirika hastened to pick up her sweating container and raised it tentatively towards her partner.

To Kirika's shock, Mireille rocked her body forwards and captured the end of Kirika's spoon in the girl's other hand in her mouth instead, before leaning back again, her red lips dragging smoothly along the spoon, taking with her the dollop of ice cream that had been there.

Mireille's lips rubbed together, white vanilla smeared between them as she contemplated the cookies and cream. "Mine's better," she concluded, licking her lips a little.

Kirika stared. She had used that spoon. It had been in her mouth before Mireille's. And now…. Kirika looked at her spoon, shiny not with ice cream but with her love's saliva.

The blonde piled a helping of her own ice cream onto her little spoon, and brought it to Kirika's mouth. "Try mine," she irresistibly invited.

Holding her spoon and her ice cream tub in her hands, dumbfounded, Kirika's lips all but instinctively parted. Mireille eased the spoon into her mouth, angling it slowly and gently to the contours of the girl's closing lips and lifting tongue, before sliding it gracefully free. Kirika tasted rich and sweet strawberries, but she wanted the other flavour, the one behind the ice cream, the one surely sweeter and more enchanting than any dessert. There was a hint of it; what she thought was a hint of it-what she hoped was. Her eyes had closed.

"I told you," Mireille said.

Kirika's eyes lazily opened to the sight of her love scooping more of her strawberry ice cream into her own mouth, her cheeks sucking in slightly as she teased the pink dessert around inside to melting using her tongue. Kirika watched her throat work as she swallowed.

"It's not just for me," Mireille said softly, her gaze elsewhere as she dug up another spoonful. "It's not only my past." She ate the scoop peacefully, rolling it around in her mouth again before swallowing. "I had to see if they were the same. That it… felt the same." She stabbed the spoon into the remaining frosty pink hills and left it there, putting her hands on the table, her head and gaze lowered. "They took the life I should have had away from me. They took the life *you* were meant to have away." Mireille raised her head and looked at Kirika. "It… hurts when I imagine what they did to you." Her expression hardened. "It's unforgivable. I want them to know they can't get away with it; that I haven't forgotten or forgiven them. I want them gone. Erased completely."

Mireille loosed a heavy sigh and rested her head back, staring at the ceiling, her features relaxing. "My family has been dead for a long time. But you…. With you, what they did is everlasting. Every time I look at you, I'm reminded. They're Altena's rotten fruits, those women. Her legacy. They're like her. They *knew* what Altena had done, but they didn't care to stop it. I… can't go on while they still do." Her head turned, her eyes capturing Kirika's. "Do you understand?"

Kirika smiled, small and shaky, her eyes burning as her vision blurred. "I understand." Mireille didn't have to explain; Kirika would follow her anywhere. But that the woman had, that she'd opened her heart for a moment, let slip the mask, permitting Kirika to *see*…. Kirika loved her so much. And Mireille loved her. The woman's heart was clear to the teenager. Mireille's forgiveness was Kirika's because of that love; the girl should never forget that. The blonde *really* cared about her. There wasn't an agenda behind it, it wasn't to manipulate or use Kirika-it was simply because. It was how Mireille felt.

Kirika wished she could find the words to tell her that she felt it too; somehow will her tongue to be that graceful, that forthright. Mireille had to have known, though. The words didn't really matter; it was what they *did* show that counted. The look in Mireille's eyes only Kirika comprehended, the look just for her; the small touches, delicate, barely there, yet full of meaning. But words still held their niceties when they *were* uttered; when it was laid bare, bereft of subtlety or ambiguity. Kirika wished….

"I…" Kirika wrestled with herself, her breathing shallow.

"It's going to melt."

Kirika glanced down at her cookies and cream ice cream. Mireille had been right; her strawberry really was better. "Can I have more of yours?"

Mireille smiled; the kind of smile only the girl got to see. The woman lifted her spoon to her love's waiting lips.

* * *

To be continued….

Author's ramblings:

*Claps hands together* Okay, Japan intro arc is done, and time to really get stuck into the real meat of everything now… although I think I might have said that before. ^.^;;; Up next should be beach fun, some slick assassination action, and the focus all but permanently on Mireille/Kirika from now on. It's *so* hard to limit the Mireille/Kirika affection. It's going to be *such* a release when I'm finally able to up the physical intimacy to maximum.

Irezumi = Those big tattoos you see yakuza people wearing all the time in movies.


	24. The Professional’s Vacation

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twenty-fourth chapter. Hehe, fluff. Well, some.

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 24 - The Professional's Vacation

The resort hotel's lobby was as open air as it could be while still having walls and a ceiling. Its rear outer doors were fixed open to admit sea breezes as readily as it did its guests, and its windows were tall plate glass below the shade of individual canvas canopies outside, such that the view of the beach and the ocean that stretched to the horizon after it was always a backdrop. Inside there were almost as many potted palm trees and other tropical plants as there were outside growing in the soil and sand, and the furniture was primarily wicker, padded with pale khaki cushions decorated with the stock motif of leaves or colourful flowers in bloom. The resort's staff however had escaped the tropical treatment, dressed professionally as one would generally expect-in suits for the desk staff or in white shirts and waistcoats for the room staff. Flamboyant Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops had their place with the tourists, and there were plenty of those, despite the temperature starting to drop slightly below perfect and the weather hinting at souring, owing to the lateness of the season. All in all the resort wasn't too upscale, but not a dump either-popular with the upper middle-class. And dominating the alluring beachside as it did, dwarfing lesser hotels on this side of the Okinawan coast, it was a tourist magnet. A western face wouldn't stick out here.

"I'll check us in," Mireille said, leaving Kirika to loiter in the lounge with their bags while she approached the front desk. Perhaps it could be said that the resort hotel was below her usual standards, but in her business her tastes had to be variable; adaptable. Whatever fit the job was what she liked best. As for Kirika... the girl was not one to complain.

"Hello," the desk clerk slurred in accented English as he looked up from his computer to Mireille. "Welcome to-"

"I'd like a room for two. I don't have a reservation," the blonde declared with slight briskness in Japanese, standing expectantly before the lobby's main desk.

"Ah... Let me just... check here..." the desk clerk responded in likewise Japanese, though with less certainty than when he had spoken in English. His eyes lowered to his computer screen as he fiddled with the mouse, but occasionally they would flick up to regard his hotel's prospective new guest with a mixture of hesitation and admiration. "You speak very well," he eventually braved to comment.

Mireille smiled faintly but politely, having predicted the interest. Perhaps she should have feigned ignorance with the local language to appear more the regular oblivious sightseer and beach lover, but even with the Okinawan slant on the mainland Japanese tongue she understood and was too used to speaking it to pretend otherwise. A subterfuge would have proved tiresome sooner or later, and probably wasn't worth the trouble. While the Corsican's fluency had the potential to single her out, she couldn't be the only foreigner around with a penchant for languages. Nor was it a dead giveaway for her profession. It helped to know a place's vernacular if you travelled across borders, simple as that.

Mireille smirked suddenly, prompting the desk clerk to look up at her again curiously, but the smirk was directed at herself; a nostalgic and melancholy thing. That had been her uncle's tenet. He, and the tutors he had hired for when business took him abroad, had drilled into her various languages and dialects just as he had drilled into her his flawless ability with a pistol. Uncle Claude had focused on European languages as that continent had been where his black path had largely winded through; it had been left to Mireille to learn Japanese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. While she was confident in her eastern tongues, in some ways they didn't come as naturally to her as the languages her uncle had taught her did.

"Yes, we have some rooms," the desk clerk spoke up, breaking Mireille's reverie. "Would you like a twin, or a queen, or maybe a suite?"

Mireille allowed herself to look back over her shoulder as she pondered the question that shouldn't have needed pondering; an indulgent look that she should have curbed, yet couldn't see the harm in at the moment. Her blue gaze found her partner sitting gingerly on the end of a wicker armchair encircled by their luggage, the mop-headed girl watching the hotel staff and guests come and go. As though sensing the scrutiny she was under, Kirika turned her head to Mireille, expressionless as usual, but her doe eyes full of feeling for those that knew what to look for... and that felt the same.

"A queen," Mireille answered before rational thought could balk. It was a personal pleasure that should have been curtailed. A big one. One that carried with it red flags. This was not her apartment, nor was it the safehouse; people might take notice of her sleeping arrangements with Kirika. Mireille should have gone with the customary twin room, even if it meant her petite companion would be condemned to restless nights separated from her side.

"Would you like a room with a view of the ocean?"

"Why not," Mireille conceded in a sigh.

"Alright... I need you to fill this out and provide your passport or some other identification," the clerk said, laying a form out in front of Mireille and a pen on top. "I'll need a credit card for extras as well."

"There won't be any extras," Mireille said as she quickly scribbled where she had to, and then offered her passport with the completed document. Credit was a bonfire in the night where cash was barely a struck match. Seldom did the blonde pay for anything with a card unless there was no other means, even if she wasn't on an assignment. It had become a habit, but a habit that kept you safe was a good one to have.

The clerk checked everything over, and then smiled as he handed the passport back. It was a forgery, very expensive, and virtually perfect. It had to be these days. If France's and Japan's airport security hadn't faulted it, a lowly hotel desk clerk wasn't going to be hit by a sudden revelation. "Thank you, Ms. Theroux. And how long will you be staying with us?"

Mireille took a deep breath, smelling the sea salt carried by the cool air that gently brushed her flaxen locks from her shoulders. "I'll let you know."

Mireille didn't have the patience to wait for hotel staff to assist with bringing the bags up to their room; better in her and Kirika's hands than in anyone else's anyway. An elevator brought the young women to the fifth floor and a keycard the desk clerk had given the blonde opened the door to room 1256. The hotel room had all the standard fittings and amenities inside, and thankfully the wicker furniture had been confined to the lobby.

"Yoisho," Mireille heard Kirika mumble under her breath as the girl dumped her bag on the queen size bed.

Mireille favoured her partner with a fond look before she hefted her suitcase onto the provided baggage rack. Kirika didn't outwardly show that she was happy about Mireille's room choice, but the Corsican didn't have to search for a cue to know that she was. That didn't deter Mireille from fishing for a reaction, however. "Looks comfy, doesn't it," she casually remarked, though a smile danced on her lips.

Kirika looked up from the bed to the woman and nodded solemnly, as if she'd been asked a life or death question. "Mm," she hummed.

Mireille smiled a little and walked over to the windows at the far side of the room, opposite the entrance. The desk clerk had been true to his word; there was certainly a view. From the fifth floor the ocean met the sky in two hues of blue, and the beach filled the rest of the vista. It was a peaceful picture; the wispy clouds and the seabirds calling from among them, and the rhythmic rush of waves caressing the sand smooth. Mireille let it sweep her away for a few moments; let the gulls' harping relax and the ocean soothe; and then grasped the curtains to tug them closed. She valued her privacy, and was aware of the dangers that could arise from not having it. Binoculars and telephoto lenses saw far, just as far as a sniper's scope. Finding a vantage this close to the shoreline and at this angle for surveillance or more would be tricky without standing plain as day on the beach or out on the water in a boat, but assume a master of their craft was out there somewhere waiting for a mistake and it would keep you alive and under the radar. A simple closed curtain would stop a professional just as effectively as a casual voyeur. It was just good sense. Home was a different case; it was home, not a foreign land, not a place where she couldn't be Mireille Bouquet. Here Mireille didn't see windows as something to gaze out of, but rather something that other people gazed through from the reverse side.

Mireille hesitated, and then let her arms fall to her sides. She turned her head slightly, enough to see Kirika out of the corner of one eye. It would be a shame to hide the view behind curtains. There was such a thing as being overzealous. Paranoid. The world wasn't always watching, though Mireille knew well that the world *did* have eyes, and they were dark and conniving indeed. Just this once, then. Just this once a little light let in to brighten the room and those within it. She was paying good money for the view after all.

"The beach looks nice," Mireille enticed, turning away from the window to face Kirika. "I might even have a dip in the ocean."

Kirika simply looked at the blonde in that inquisitive way of hers, oblivious to the woman's agenda. "Mm..." she eventually said, cocking her head to one side uncertainly.

"Do you want to join me?"

"Mm," Kirika said, firmer this time and with some enthusiastic nodding.

Mireille grinned knowingly. Of course Kirika wanted to come with her. There was barely a moment when they weren't together, and when they were apart, the darkhaired girl always hastened to reunite with her. It was funny to think that at one time the clingy behaviour had been grating to Mireille; like an unwanted puppy following her around. But like with a puppy, it had a way of growing on you; a way of sneaking into your heart, until the next thing you realised you had a pet. Or in this case a lover.

"You'll need a swimsuit." Mireille had taken her partner to the beach in past, however back then Kirika had been less of a partner and more of a grudging necessity, and the blonde hadn't cared what her new Japanese acquisition got up to in their quiet periods, as long as it didn't bother her. It was a chance to make up for it now.

"I have a swimsuit," Kirika said. Noticing the woman's surprise, the girl unzipped her travel bag and dug around inside it for a few seconds. What she pulled out caused Mireille's throat to dry.

"That's..." Mireille began as she stared at the navy school onepiece swimsuit, complete with class number labelled on the front from when she had attended Tsubaki High, but couldn't find the words to continue. It would serve its purpose, yet in good conscience Mireille couldn't allow Kirika to frolic on the sand and in the water clad in that outfit. It was just... wrong. The sight would probably attract a fair share of gawkers... but what chiefly concerned the blonde was that she might be among them. "We're-" She swallowed to stop her words from sticking in her throat, and tried again; calmer and clearer. "We're going shopping. We'll get you something new, alright?"

Kirika looked at the swimsuit she held up in one hand, her brow creasing and her soulful eyes batting as she no doubt mused why the outfit wasn't up to scratch. There were some things that just couldn't be explained. Or rather, better off left alone.

* * *

The barman slipped his tray under his arm and bowed, before leaving Mireille and Kirika to their drinks. Mireille picked up her raspberry vodka and cranberry juice cocktail from the table between her and her partner's loungers and took a long and decadent sip through its straw. The cool sweetness of the combined fruit flavours and the slow-building buzz of vodka was nectar from heaven, and with the setting-the lulling banter of the calm ocean's tide, the not-too-warm sun gently toasting the sandy beach from a beautiful sky overhead-it all worked to knead the worries from her mind and loosen the knots from her muscles. She reclined further back in her seat, her body usually always in a state of readiness; taut and mistrustful; finally relaxing that last inch, becoming limp.

Here on this resort's beach Mireille was a tourist like everybody else. Her concerns were tourists' concerns-her purse being stolen; misplacing her hotel keycard; sunburn. In the back of her mind the assassin's instincts persisted, preaching of the perils behind every corner, of extraordinary dangers an everyday citizen would never contemplate. But for now Mireille was a part of the everyday, and no one unless they knew her would think any different. She blended in not because she had to, that it was some sort of cover, but because she was one of them, of the masses, simply living her life as normal. On this beach there weren't targets to stalk and remove nor authorities to shun or threats to evade or terminate. If people with ill intent watched, then they watched harmlessly from afar. It was too public to make a move here, and although the risk of the sniper was constant, it wasn't a very real risk. It was too early in the game for an aggressive move like that from any of Noir's enemies. Besides, Mireille and Kirika didn't travel without covering their tracks and watching their tails. Another beneficial habit.

Mireille turned her head to peer at Kirika though her sunglasses, the girl looking a bit awkward sitting there on the lounger an arm's distance away. She sat stiffly; back straight despite the lean of the lounger; staring out across the sea. As long as she was with Mireille, snipers or anyone else would never get the drop on them. Though the Corsican could dial it down a notch, Kirika never switched off, never relaxed; not really. It was who she was. Perhaps it should be admired, however Mireille just felt it was sad.

Mireille looked again at her partner, banishing the bleak contemplations and instead focusing on something more pleasant-Kirika's new swimsuit. It was a onepiece, dark blue with a pair of parallel white stripes up each side-not much unlike her school swimsuit Mireille abruptly realised, and with some discomfort. It could have been worse... or was that better? There had been much skimpier choices at the hotel's swimwear store; much too skimpy for the innocent likes of Kirika. Yet Mireille had *almost* succumbed to temptation, allowing her runaway imagination to clothe her partner rather than have reality wisely call the shots. She'd had several bikinis in her hand no less, from the modest to downright itty-bitty things, for Kirika to just 'try on' before she'd come to her senses. Harmless it had seemed initially, although her conscience had had something else to say about it. And Kirika would have tried them all on without a word either way said; indeed, she had acted far too used to modelling at Mireille's leisure that it had become rather unsettling to the blonde-the girl had come to expect it, going so far as to take the-fortunately innocuous-outfits from Mireille's hands before the woman had even brought up the subject of change rooms. No doubt Kirika would have worn anything on the beach the blonde might have purchased for her, indifferent or more likely oblivious to the scandalous display she'd put on. Or maybe it would be only scandalous to Mireille's too familiar eyes. Ultimately the woman had sided with fair judgement and was glad of it, despite the twinge of regret she felt gazing upon her partner now.

The onepiece swimsuit did so cling though, sticking to and outlining the contours of Kirika's trim body. It was still a pleasure to look upon... but deep down Mireille was conscious that to her it was the person wearing it that truly had all the charm.

Mireille took a last mouthful of her cocktail and put it down on the table, then adjusted her lounger until it was lying flat. With a blissful sigh she rolled over onto her stomach, a turned cheek resting on her folded hands. Her lazy gaze was half-lidded, and was free to clandestinely stare at the girl across the way as much as she desired behind the tinted veil of her sunglasses. For a while she watched Kirika as she sipped dispassionately at her fruit juice, expressionless, seeming gone from this world. She began to feel herself drift off in the girl's stoicism; the poignant, yawning reddish-brown gaze; the calm and unaffected aura. It took an effort to snap back into full wakefulness, and when she did Mireille reached down at the side of her lounger for her handbag. She opened it and blindly felt around inside, touching her Walther P99 and extra magazine briefly while on her quest for something else much more mundane and that only protected... yet in her case had the potential to still be dangerous. However, Mireille's conscience that had been strong earlier in the swimsuit store was muffled now-or maybe she was just not willing to listen this time. It wasn't a big deal anyway, she told herself. Yet she knew she would make it feel like it was. Still, Mireille kept searching through her handbag, and when she found what she was looking for she pulled it out and held it towards Kirika, her arm outstretched.

"Do my back, would you?" the blonde said, as though it were an everyday request. It was of course, but not for them. Not for her, and how she felt. How they felt. Her eyes were closed now, her body still limp, but it was a feigned relaxation. Inside she questioned herself furiously; argued; scolded. Was it her heart or was it her body that had taken control? Or again, was it both in concert, conspiring, joining together for a common goal; a common need? Did it matter?

Kirika, while characteristically nonplussed, naturally obliged, taking the sunscreen lotion from her partner's grasp. She put her juice glass down and moved closer, vacating her lounger for the edge of Mireille's. For her part Mireille resettled herself, getting as comfortable as she could given the circumstances-circumstances that were entirely her own doing, she was painfully aware. She tried not to fidget, however she had become very conscious of what she was wearing. On any other day, at any other moment, in the company of anybody else, the woman would not have been the type to be insecure about how she chose to cloth herself. But this was today, *this* moment, and in Kirika's company. The girl had been spared a revealing bikini, but that was not to say that Mireille hadn't pampered herself. The blonde currently wore her new acquisition-a white bikini; not terribly indecent, however there was only so much skin small triangles of cloth and strings could cover. It wasn't about what Kirika could see though; rather what she would be able to touch... to *feel*... and what it might provoke inside Mireille.

Mireille swallowed, her eyes still squeezed shut. She could sense her partner hovering over her. Each second that past without Kirika's hands upon her left a growing tingling sensation inside the blonde, her nerves animated in united anticipation. And just when Mireille was starting to feel young and foolish for playing the part of the giddy maiden, Kirika's fingertips gently brushed against the nape of her neck. Immediately whatever muscles that weren't already rigid Mireille tightened. But it wasn't the beginning-Kirika's fingers scoped underneath the silky straw-coloured bundles of hair that lay across Mireille's back and moved the mane out of the way, over one creamy shoulder. The beginning finally came when Mireille felt the cool lotion against her hot skin, guided by tentative, slender fingers.

Kirika began at her neck, and then glided her hands outwards to her shoulders, smearing the sunscreen as she went. By the time the girl's hands reached Mireille's shoulder blades her fingers had become bolder, firmer, plying the flesh and the muscles underneath with increasing confidence. Less did Mireille feel the lotion, and more the warmth and pressure of her partner's fingertips and hands all over her back. The woman hadn't intended it to be a massage, but it started to feel like one. And it felt good. Who would have known that Kirika had a talent for it? Her touch was gentle, soothing, yet hard enough to entice muscles to ooze into submission beneath her pressing fingertips. Hands so accustomed to hurting, to killing, shouldn't be this soft and calming. It occurred to Mireille she had scarcely considered what other skills the young assassin might possess beyond that of dealing death. She wondered what other traces of the girl that had been lingered like a ghost within Kirika, behind the manufactured assassin-before the killer.

Kirika worked her way down Mireille's back, navigating around the woman's bikini top's straps, the fingers apparently still retaining some shyness as they did not dare slip underneath. A wild thought gambolled through Mireille's head to reach behind and loosen those straps to embolden her partner. If the blonde hadn't felt like it was impossible to move an inch while Kirika's hands were upon her the thought might have lived for longer, instead of being anxiously snuffed out.

Minutes or hours may have gone by; for Mireille it could have been an eternity or a blink of an eye. There came a moment where she forgot to be apprehensive or guilty, and simply lay there, drifting, enjoying the kiss of the sea breeze and the whispering of the undulating waves-and most of all Kirika beside her, rubbing and soothing. She became addicted to Kirika's touch; a willing doll for the girl to play with; but only distantly was the blonde aware of the change. She kept drifting, accepting it, and with it came closer to escaping from the world. From her world. It wasn't an emptiness; not a black void; but there was peace there. She smiled softly as she touched it.

Kirika's hands reached the base of Mireille's spine... and the hem of the woman's bikini bottoms. Her hands stopped there, rousing the blonde. "All over," Mireille mumbled groggily.

There was a lengthy pause, however Kirika eventually obeyed, and Mireille didn't so much as flinch or tense or even slightly feel the cold and hollow pangs of guilt in the pit of her stomach when the girl shifted her hands lower, smoothing them over her rear. The bikini contained only half of the blonde's bottom at most, resulting in the other half bare and squeezing out of the sides. Dutifully Kirika applied sunscreen to the cheeks, yet spent no longer there than anywhere else, soon moving on to the backs of Mireille's thighs and calves. The darkhaired girl's small hands ran the length of Mireille's legs, coating them with lotion and making the Corsican's skin glisten under the sun, a match for the woman's already treated back.

The hands ceased their soothing once again, and with effort Mireille revived herself. She turned over onto her back; although it was more a cross between a flop and a roll; and became limp again, as if it had taken all of her energy to perform that small manoeuvre. She hadn't even opened her eyes. "You can do my front now," Mireille murmured nonchalantly. There obviously was no reason she couldn't take the sunscreen from Kirika and do the rest herself. In fact that would have been the proper and sensible course of action; not this... indulgence... this... *exploitation*. Kirika didn't know any better-couldn't know-it was obvious to anyone but her. Mireille was taking advantage of Kirika and her naivety. Anyone else would have read Mireille's true motivation plain as day, seen right through her and her desire, but not Kirika. The girl was too innocent for that. Mireille knew this, and yet... Doubts popped up, accusing her of being like those that had twisted and abused Kirika for their own gain. It was different though, she argued with herself-she loved Kirika. Moreover, she felt remorse... even if it didn't always make her reconsider. Mireille tried not to think too much on it. Again however, that was for her benefit-the more she dwelled, the more she second guessed herself, and the more likely she was to abandon her selfish ploys and suppress her desires. And Mireille didn't want to.

When the woman felt her partner's slick hands return to her, any scrap of regret or shame evaporated under that tender kneading. Again Kirika began at Mireille's neck and shoulders, spreading lotion on the areas that had been overlooked the first time around. From her shoulders Kirika slid her hands down Mireille's bare arms; resting there at the blonde's sides like dead weights and infinitely pliable to the girl's manipulation. Kirika took Mireille's hands in her own; each in turn; cupping them from above and below. Gently she rubbed; the palm first, then her fingers mingling with the woman's, interlacing, the sunscreen smoothing the many unions. It seemed like a simple thing, a small affection, but having Kirika hold and minister to her hands in such a way was a surprisingly tranquil experience to Mireille.

Then the girl moved on to her chest. Mireille's bikini top was just as lacking as the bottom, and with her breasts slightly splayed thanks to her supine position on the lounger, no doubt little was left to the imagination. Nevertheless Kirika's hands went to explore the fresh territory as it was, without so much as a hint of timidness. Kirika started high, coating the tops of the blonde's breasts that the bikini didn't cover, and then whatever else was exposed, her fingers easily dimpling the supple flesh as she edged around the white cloth and strings. Mireille mused what was running through her partner's mind as she worked at something that bordered on the erotic-or was. She had much more up there than Kirika did. Was the girl comparing in her head? Mireille was almost tempted to open her eyes a tiny bit, slits at most, to see Kirika's face. But Mireille knew there wouldn't be answers to be had upon that pretty visage, or even in those soulful eyes. Likely Kirika felt nothing. It was a job to her, a task that had to be done. That it was Mireille's breasts she was feeling up was inconsequential.

And what did Mireille feel? She felt Kirika's soft hands... but that was as far as she was willing to delve.

Eventually Kirika's hands came together in the centre of Mireille's bosom, running down her sternum until progressing on to the woman's tight stomach. Her hands circled the blonde's navel, greasing the span around it, and then dodged the shallowly cut bikini bottoms as she spread the lotion further on to Mireille's thighs. Once more Kirika lavished the Corsican's legs one after the other, her fingers slipping around to massage the inner thighs and behind the knees, finally traversing the calves to reach Mireille's feet. She pampered them, handling them like she had the woman's hands, her firm yet gentle fingertips sending tingles of delight straight through Mireille's entire body. Mireille wasn't sure if she might have let out a moan or not, but she definitely breathed heavier.

Kirika's pinched fingers slipped off the toes of Mireille's right foot, leaving the woman's body for the last time. Rapture melted slowly back into a not-so-bad reality, and Mireille let her eyelids drift open. All she could do was smile gratefully at the girl sitting in front of her. But it was enough, and Kirika understood, smiling quietly back.

"It's your turn now," Mireille jauntily announced, sitting up and snatching the lotion from her partner's grasp before she could react with anything except befuddlement. The blonde cocked her head towards the other lounger. "Sit over there."

While Kirika did as she was told Mireille internally steeled herself. The blonde seemed picture perfect, what with her encouraging smile, the sparkle in her shaded eyes, and overall blasé demeanour. However Mireille could look a variety of things on the outside; it was a talent. Presenting falsehoods to the outside world was part of her trade. But honesty-now that was something else. And if she was honest with herself, then she was nervous; perhaps more so now than when she had been lying down before Kirika, under the girl's hands and open to whatever ministrations she'd had in mind. Mireille didn't often let nerves get the better of her... but also she didn't often let her heart lead the way.

It was Mireille's turn to sit on the edge of Kirika's lounger, except she sat slightly further down, where the girl's feet reached. She squirted a dollop of sunscreen lotion into one hand; almost pressing too hard and sending a deluge into her palm before catching herself. She was taking advantage of Kirika again-that's how she felt, anyway. Was this worse than earlier? Mireille was simply returning the favour... It sounded feeble even in her head. She could beat herself up over her conduct and wallow in self-reproach later-she had come too far now. Another weak excuse, but Mireille was happy to seize upon it.

Mireille's fingers pushed in between Kirika's toes, sawing back and forth for a bit, before she smoothed her hands over the tops of both the girl's bare feet, spreading sunscreen. The woman grinned at her partner as she ran a teasing fingertip down the sole of one foot that had Kirika twitch her leg and jerk it back a little. Kirika was ticklish, was she? Mireille couldn't help doing it again with the girl's other foot, inciting a similar adorable reaction.

Mireille rubbed her way up both of Kirika's lithe legs at the same time, each of the blonde's hands circling around the calves vigorously, feeling the hard tone of trained muscles beneath surprisingly soft skin. When she reached her partner's thighs she took them on one at a time, her fingertips pushing sunscreen lotion all the way up to where the girl's swimsuit began at her crotch and behind. The woman's fingertips toyed at the bikini line-more than they should have-however she kept the pretence up, soon stopping to squeeze more lotion into her hands.

Mireille stole glances at Kirika's face, thankful for her sunglasses doing well to hide her eyes. She hoped to gauge her reaction, to see if she stirred anything in her... and to see if maybe the girl was wise to her advances. Kirika had closed her eyes, leaning back in the slightly upright lounger. Did that mean she was enjoying it? Or was she merely mimicking how Mireille had behaved? At least her eyes wouldn't be upon Mireille as she did this. Kirika's gaze hadn't been accusing before her eyes had shut, but it made it easier nonetheless.

Mireille lifted Kirika's left arm in one hand and with the other coated the limb with sunscreen from wrist to shoulder, stroking back and forth several times until she was satisfied. With the girl's hand she paid particular attention to repay her for earlier; Mireille spent minutes tenderly massaging in between the array of bones and between her partner's slim fingers, and spent more rubbing spirals with a thumb upon her palm. She watched Kirika's face throughout, trying to tell whether it felt as delightful as it had to her. However at most it seemed like Kirika was having a pleasant dream, her face relaxed yet primarily emotionless. Maybe Mireille wasn't doing it right. It wasn't as if she had experience giving massages.

The woman smiled ruefully to herself. There was no mistaking this was absolutely a massage and not the clinical application of sunscreen she professed it to be. Kirika wouldn't know the difference though. Mireille sighed, unsure how she felt about that.

Mireille switched sides on the lounger so she could get at and treat Kirika's right arm as she had the girl's left, and then focused on her partner's neck. Kirika's swimsuit had a scoop neck, however barely any part of her chest was left open to the air. Nevertheless the blonde relished what she had before her, painstakingly rubbing sunscreen with her fingertips across delicate collar bones up to Kirika's neck, and gently sliding her hands around the slender throat. Mireille's left hand then slipped down from the nape of Kirika's neck, over her shoulder to the naked skin the swimsuit's open, though shallow, back exposed, while with her right she touched the girl's hip, coaxing her to rise and sit upright.

Kirika did, though she stayed asleep and dreaming. Mireille held her near, leaning close that their cheeks almost brushed, and caressed the last measure of lotion onto her back in steady, concentric circles. Perhaps onepiece swimsuits weren't entirely a lost cause.

Mireille held Kirika to her for longer than necessary, continuing to rub even though the lotion had long been spread into nothingness. The woman looked past her love's shoulder, at the palm trees and sand, at the blue sky and serenity. It *was* paradise... but the people-or rather person-you shared it with made it so.

Mireille gently eased Kirika back onto the recliner, and the girl awakened, staring up at her. "Now neither of us will burn," the blonde said. She took a last bit of lotion and swiped it along the bridge of Kirika's nose, smiling lopsidedly.

Kirika peered down at her nose and the creamy streak it wore and rubbed at it, wiping the sunscreen over her cheeks.

Mireille went back to her lounger and retrieved her cocktail. She needed the drink more than ever-she sucked on the straw until the bottom of it crackled that her cocktail had become an empty glass. A swim in the cool sea seemed the next best thing. But neither craving was due to the heat of the tropical sun above.

* * *

Kirika observed Mireille as the woman picked up a big prawn from the seafood salad in front of her. Pinched between her thumb and forefinger, she daintily dipped it in some sort of pinkish sauce collected at the centre of the salad before bringing it up to her lips, the rose-hued cushions closing around the ocean morsel, and two delicate bites with perfect white teeth later only the apparently inedible or bad-tasting tail of the prawn was left. Mireille disposed of the tail on the rim of the plate that cradled the salad bowl, and plucked another prawn from the crowd buried in ice and fresh fruits, destined for a fate that was captivating to Kirika sitting on the other side of the round table.

The darkhaired girl could almost overlook the other people around them. But she and Mireille weren't really alone, and her instincts, honed over her lifetime, would never let her forget it no matter the distraction before her. The hotel's restaurant was all hustle and bustle, everyone predictably wanting something to eat now that it was lunchtime. They came in droves to plunder the outdoor buffet and lay claim to other tables, and although Kirika didn't focus her gaze on them, she saw them. The other diners looked like harmless tourists on the outside-but so did she and Mireille.

The open air restaurant was attached to the hotel; a terrace with canvas coverings overhead jutting out from one side onto the beach; and as such the majority of the diners still had on their swimsuits or beachwear from their seaside recreation. Kirika and Mireille did too, fitting in. The girl's navy swimsuit was darker than usual; still damp from when she had followed her partner into the ocean's waves; as were her arms and legs still soaked, and hair still dripping. She hadn't swum before, let alone 'taken a dip' in the ocean, as Mireille had described it. Yet the strokes to stay afloat had come naturally, and the sensation of buoyancy had been familiar and not at all disconcerting. For a moment Kirika had believed she had stood waist deep and surrounded by water in the past, but then the belief had slipped through her mind, just like the water had done through her fingers, returning to an indistinct ocean of memories. No doubt her body *did* have experience swimming, but for Kirika body and mind were two separate things. For *her*, it had been her first time in the sea. Her first time to swim for no other reason than 'just because'. And for certain her first time swimming with Mireille.

The blonde had taken delight in splashing Kirika, as if the girl having to wipe water out of her eyes was somehow funny. Kirika had noticed other people doing the same however, everyone seeming to derive enjoyment from the frolic. Tentatively she had tried splashing Mireille back, and had discovered that it made her smile too seeing the woman attempt to writhe away from the spray, or blubber in the aftermath. Why, Kirika didn't know. But she did know she had liked it, and that had been simple enough motivation to keep playing, continuing the addictive game until Mireille had begged off any more watery assaults.

The pair had come back to the beach smelling of the sea. It wasn't a bad odour-Kirika did in fact find it pleasing, like everything else here. She liked the warm and soft beach sand sinking beneath her feet and the limitless sighing ocean where she could stare towards forever. It was the edge of peace, beautiful and unspoiled. She wished for solitary instead of sharing it with dozens of other people, but realised it was impossible. Perhaps they felt the same as her? Perhaps they too felt at the edge of peace, as if all that blue was on the verge of swallowing them up and whisking them somewhere else, somewhere... quieter. Kirika wondered if Mireille had parallel feelings. Sharing the empty seaside with her would have been okay. No... being there with just her would have perfected it. Solitary was for the past; it was for a different Kirika. When the girl thought of being alone, she wasn't really alone. There was always someone else included in the isolation. Noir was a name for two. It was the only gift she had been given by Altena and Soldats, yet was the greatest of gifts-what she'd always wanted.

Mireille tipped her head back, an oyster sliding into her mouth from the half-shell she had cupped in her hand. They were strange and ugly creatures, seeming not meant for eating, yet watching the woman's throat work as she eventually swallowed the slimy greyish slug had Kirika want her to devour more of them. Mireille's skin glistened, the woman wet from head to foot as Kirika was, droplets of sea water dotting her body and catching the sunlight a myriad of fresh ways whenever she moved. Some broke free every so often seemingly by their own impulse, running down her naked arms and chest, the latter bound for the inescapable furrow there. Her blonde hair was darker, sodden, but still hung in beautiful long waves and curls about her shoulders, impossible to diminish with a little dunking in the ocean. No, to Kirika this was just another angle to the jewel; another perspective. And yet... something had changed.

Kirika's appreciation for how her partner looked and moved wasn't a new discovery, but there was more to it now. It had... sharpened. The woman before her, who was always at her side, had become... more... *real*. Kirika had forever looked on; her eyes bathing in the creamy skin and gentle curves, the rich blue gaze and beautiful visage it stared out from; treasuring every detail, committing them all to memory to relive in her mind when the woman was no longer within her sight. However, every time Kirika had looked on it had been from a distance either great or small, but always a distance. Eyes couldn't know the softness of that creamy skin or the sensation of those gentle curves. Mireille still wore her new swimsuit, an outfit that revealed a lot of her body. Kirika hardly ever saw so much of it except when Mireille changed clothes, and during those instances the blonde wasn't favourable to her peeking. Now however Mireille's body was openly exhibited; Kirika was free to look, to stare, for as long as she liked. It was bliss for her eyes, a rare pleasure-and yet it was nothing, an image in a mirror only compared to what she had... felt.

Kirika's hands were like someone else's. Ordinarily that would be cause for panic, but there wasn't anything sinister about the sensation. Her hands were tantalised, sensitised; sacred all of a sudden; so much so she didn't want to touch anything else with them. How could hands so *black*, so *tainted*, feel this way? But these hands had been on Mireille. They had been on an angel. They had been on the woman she loved; touching and feeling. They had run almost all over Mireille's body, learning it, finally putting reality up against the reflections Kirika had had about the shape and the suppleness. Her imagination could rest, proven inferior to the real thing and no longer needed. Kirika would never forget how it had felt-how *Mireille* had felt. The girl wondered if it was a privilege that she would not get again. There would be other beaches, wouldn't there? It was a new reason to like them. Nevertheless, it wasn't a surprise to her that she couldn't help but stare blatantly across the table; playing the memory in her head; and musing whether staring was all she would have once more. Moreover, Kirika wondered if her hands would still feel blessed rather than cursed as the days went by and the blood and sin inevitably came back.

Kirika's hands weren't the only parts of her body that felt special. Mireille had touched her too. The woman had considerately applied sunscreen to her arms and legs and wherever else the sun could strike, in return for Kirika doing the same to her earlier. For Mireille it had probably been an everyday activity, something shared between friends or people you knew, and not another thought given to it. However to Kirika it had been... something more. Something else completely. It wasn't the same as Kirika putting her hands to Mireille's body, but it had been just as unique, just as special. Just as memorable.

Mireille would likely not think too well of Kirika reading so much into what was probably simple contact between two people to her; she'd think her foolish maybe, or naive. But the fact remained that Kirika had really liked it. She'd liked touching Mireille and being touched by her. The girl wondered if other people ever felt this way when they touched another person. Or when they touched someone they cared about; someone they loved. Was that it? Was it love that made Kirika feel like this? Was it normal then? Did Mireille feel the same then? Did the same feelings bombard the woman as they did Kirika now? Had Mireille felt what Kirika had when their hands had been on each other?

Staring at the blonde, Kirika wasn't sure. Mireille seemed the same. Whereas Kirika was confused and excited; thrilled and amazed to have come across something so wonderful and longing for it again, while at the same time worried that she wasn't experiencing it as she was supposed to-that what felt natural wasn't natural to anybody else. She wished she could talk about it. But the words... she didn't believe she had them, nor did it seem like something she could voice to Mireille. She loved her, and knew she probably could talk to her about anything... and yet... she couldn't imagine talking about this with her.

Even Altena, or the entity that used her voice, had nothing to say about how Kirika felt. It was eerily silent, and had been since arriving in Okinawa. No cynical mocking, no foreboding messages-nothing. Dead silence, as though her other self didn't even breathe, wasn't even aware of what had happened. Was she asleep? *Did* she sleep? The respite was welcome whatever the cause, although a little advice from Kirika's more worldly self might not have been so bad right now.

"Why don't you try one?"

Kirika blinked and met Mireille's encouraging gaze as the blonde downed another oyster.

"They're an acquired taste," the woman explained after the mouthful was gone. "They're meant to be an-" She stopped, as though suddenly lost for words. "They're a delicacy," Mireille soon continued.

Kirika eyed the tray layered with ice and with about half a dozen raw oysters atop, the creatures wallowing in moist black and white shells, waiting to be scooped out. If this were a survival situation she wouldn't have hesitated, but there were far more appetising foods on the table that she could eat instead. It was for Mireille, though.

Tentatively Kirika's hand crept towards the tray.

Mireille sniffed, attracting Kirika's attention, and she saw the blonde smiling in amusement. "You don't have to try one if you don't want to."

Kirika hesitated a moment longer, and then took a prawn from the salad near her partner instead. Mireille's smile widened and she shook her head slightly, closing her eyes for a brief moment. She reached for an oyster.

Kirika munched on her prawn, the curled and ribbed pink seafood tasting not much like anything. Regardless, she was glad it wasn't one of those strange shellfish. Her interest was still in Mireille however more than the lunch on offer; she resumed watching the lovely blonde, savouring the way she arched her neck as she tilted her head back to consume another raw oyster, and how her chest pushed out a little while she did.

There were others who savoured the sight, the woman, also. Kirika saw whenever a look was directed their way-*Mireille's* way. They weren't exactly predatory glances, failing to trigger an intuitive defence in the young assassin; however they didn't feel benign either. They came from men, young to old, from the corner of eyes or under the guise of a passing look, or over a newspaper or even openly without any sort of subtlety undertaken. Kirika didn't like how those people stared at Mireille. There was something about the stares, something behind their eyes... not intent to harm or kill, yet... still something unsettling. Not every man did it, and women seemed to oddly be exempt judging by Kirika's observations. The ones who did look seemed to admire Mireille as Kirika did... but admire her *too* much, if that made sense. Kirika just didn't like it. Did they feel what she felt for Mireille? Did *she* stare like that? Were they enjoying the blonde's new swimsuit and abundance of bare skin just like Kirika was doing?

All of a sudden Kirika thought that the pair of white triangles that consisted of Mireille's swimsuit top didn't cover enough. They clung too much, emphasising her chest and exposing the shape of it; something that shouldn't have been so easily deduced. The swimsuit hardly concealed anything at all, in fact. Mireille was practically in her underwear. Perhaps there was something important about propriety and clothing after all. These people didn't even know Mireille, yet they looked at her body, relishing its beauty and charms that they weren't worthy of. Was Mireille aware of the looks? Of course she had to be. Had she expected them? Was she used to them? The blonde didn't appear bothered by the attention she was receiving. Maybe Kirika should just ignore them too... there wasn't anything she could do about them. There were other women around wearing swimsuits like what Mireille had on as well, and they seemed similarly dismissive. It was peculiar how Mireille could be so accepting of stares when she was in a swimsuit, but when she was in underwear of practically the same style, it was intolerable. Were those other scantily-clad women given to the same weird behaviour?

"What's the matter? Don't you like how it tastes?" Mireille asked.

Kirika looked down at her half-eaten prawn and shook her head.

"You don't like it?"

"I like it," Kirika clarified, taking a bite to finish off the seafood.

A bemused smirk appeared on Mireille's face as she picked up her glass and took a drink of the red liquid inside. "What would you like to have for dinner?" she said, staring vacantly over the rim of her beverage off into the distance. There was something a bit melancholy in the stare. "Something you'd enjoy. A favourite food."

"I like ice cream," Kirika provided. Mireille should have known that.

Mireille turned her head to her, her glassy gaze no more as she raised a wry eyebrow. "I think we should keep that as a dessert," she said dryly. "What do you like to eat the most besides that? A favourite meal?"

Kirika's brow knitted and her head lowered, her eyes staring at the table but not seeing the food on it. She thought hard on the question. There were few things in this world she 'liked'. There were few things in this world her kind was permitted to like. She liked ice-cream; the coolness in her mouth and smooth texture on her tongue, and the sweet yet mellow flavours. It was soothing to eat, coating memories in that sugary haze for as long as it melted in her mouth. She had liked to draw once, to create for once instead of destroy, however its charm had been stained by her very own hands, and she knew too well that blood never really washed out completely. She liked animals, big and small, and their simple existences; the freedom in it. And they were cute.

Then there was Mireille. Kirika liked... loved... her. There wasn't anything about the woman that she didn't love. The sight of her, the smell... her voice, her mannerisms... Kirika could go on forever.

Food, though... Kirika thought about the French cuisine she'd had frequently with Mireille in Paris, but none of it stuck out in her mind as a favourite. Some foods tasted good, some foods tasted okay, and some foods tasted bad. Ultimately it was all merely fuel for her body, or had been considered as much before meeting Mireille. Alone, Kirika had eaten whatever was on hand; whatever had been in the fridge in the house she had woken up in, and when that had run out, whatever had been on the first shelf at her local conveinience store. As long as her nutritional requirements had been fulfilled, as long as the assassin kept functioning, the taste hadn't mattered.

Conversely Mireille had treated meals as something special, something to be savoured and enjoyed, worthy of care and deliberation. Kirika had dined on whatever Mireille had been eating, and later in their relationship when given a choice, had picked the first thing the woman had offered for her plate. Kirika didn't have a preference. Kirika didn't *have* preferences. She... had not been meant to think like that. Independent thought, yes, but only so far as her bullets travelled. 'Trivial' things; 'fun' things-they were not for her. Weapon maintenance was supposed to be her hobby; her favourite food was whatever rations were provided for her. Killing was meant to be her passion, and death was meant to be her lover. Altena had desired it that way. Altena had designed her life to be never-ending darkness-to be black.

"That's alright," Mireille said softly as Kirika's hesitation showed no sign of relenting. There was sympathy in the blonde's voice; genuine sympathy from her heart. Only Kirika ever got to hear it; only she ever inspired such feeling in her partner. It should have made the girl feel better, yet it only emphasised how different she was from everybody else around her. She had never been meant for *this* world-the world of fine dining and relaxing mornings on a beach. Mireille knew it too. "I'll take you somewhere nice."

Mireille breathed out heavily and turned her head towards the ocean again. She took a slow drink of her cocktail. "I was thinking of going out of town for dinner. To Kadena."

Kirika looked up, perfectly aware of what she meant. Inside the girl's mind the assassin took a breath, rousing-awake. After all, *this* was her world. And Kirika supposed it was her own as well.

* * *

Mireille sidestepped a trio of noisy and overly chummy men who tottered onto the street arms over each others' shoulders and didn't seem to have even seen her, and pushed open the door to the bar behind them-'The Locker', the sign in English. Immediately she was assaulted by loud music and more raucous voices, stopping her there in the doorway as her senses got to grips with it. Kirika edged in around her, taking in what could be intimidating revelry to many people with her usual aplomb, despite being underage for a house of liquor and smoke and as a result clearly the only teenage presence. The ceiling was obscured by a sky of roiling grey clouds, the stale and heavy scent of nicotine death inescapable even at the entrance with the street and its open night air at the two young women's rear. The tables were awash with men and the occasional woman; too many chairs crammed in around; and the tabletops themselves unsurprisingly with pitchers of beer and mugs and glasses amid spills and cigarette butts. The bar somewhere on the left was lost behind a screen of stools and customers, only identifiable by the steady stream of the latter that came with nothing and left with drinks in their arms. It didn't look like food was served beyond the complimentary peanuts, but Mireille and Kirika weren't here for that. Their dinner was still fresh on their tastebuds, enjoyed at a quaint restaurant several blocks away and far removed from this kind of atmosphere. They weren't here for dessert either, or the blonde for a nightcap. Being in this dive wasn't for pleasure. Pleasure had ended with the last bite of their meal.

Mireille felt she'd be hard pressed to get a chardonnay she favoured in this pit anyway. She had known that before entering; the Corsican assassin had done her research, although without it she could have summed up the place in seconds from the pavement outside. The dull roar she had heard on the street that she was facing full force now hadn't been vocal Japanese-the voices were English, of one particular accent. The faces at the tables and leaning over the bar were Caucasian-Americans. The bar was for them and their tastes. Even the music was western mainstream. Mireille bet the booze was as well. The Americans weren't tourists, however; they were pilots, technicians, medics-soldiers in the broadest word. The majority were out of uniform, off duty and free to make brash fools of themselves under an alcohol spur, released from the shackles of military discipline for a time. They were attached to the US air base that dominated the town, a controversial holdover from World War II. Mireille and Kirika wouldn't have been in The Locker, or Okinawa, if not for Kadena Air Base... and Soldats' love for intrigue.

Mireille's eyes scanned the room, searching for a face she recognised in the boisterous crowd. Jacques had arranged the meet-the first step in picking apart the Soldats rebels' operation-emailing the details to her, along with a picture of Colonel Chad Dickson. Dealing with unfamiliar third parties, especially when relying on them to facilitate some aspect of a contract, seldom made the blonde happy; too often a 'hitch' or two would eventuate-a 'small' problem that became anything but-or outright betrayal, simply because they were an unknown in what was meant to be a binary equation. Mireille trusted her *own* sources and her clients when embroiled in a contract, no one else bar a petite Japanese girl, and even her clients she still tended to watch like a hawk; after all, they had hired her to kill someone; morals and loyalty were unlikely traits they prized in themselves. Having more than one or two people aware of the impending hit just wasn't wise either. Trust was a dangerous notion in this business; having too much of it could kill you just effortlessly as too little could. At the end of the day experience and instinct were the best things to put your faith in-that was, if you didn't have a partner. But Mireille didn't think anyone else had a partner of Kirika's nature; a person who had no true concept of treachery, let alone had the potential for it. For other partnerships egos could chafe, money could tempt, affection could sour, but Noir would stand the test of time. *Had* stood the test of time. Mireille might not like the title and where it had come from, but the principle behind it she embraced. She couldn't imagine continuing her life as it had been before Noir... before love.

Mireille walked into the bar, careful whenever she had to squeeze past someone. Not to save their beverages or for courtesy, but for her own health. In such a public locale with so many people around the odds and logic said that nothing would happen, but even when you were ninety-nine percent sure of something, that one percent had a way of defying probability and spitting in the face of reason. Mireille didn't need a knife slipping past her ribcage from a stumbling 'drunk' to teach her that one percent chance still meant a chance.

A few whistles and catcalls followed the blonde the deeper she got into The Locker, where the smoke and odour of alcoholic breath was most pungent-at least she hoped they were for her and not for Kirika trailing after her. Mireille pretended the obnoxious men didn't exist of course; the best course of action for handling loud-mouthed louts; and moved her search to the bar itself. At the distant end of it, where the screen of customers inexplicably didn't reach, sat a lone man nursing a shot of dark liquid. He knocked it back in a single curt motion, and then flicked the empty glass across the bar towards the sizable collection he was garnering in front of him. He ordered another without pause.

Mireille's lips moved into a barely there smile, one of satisfaction and cold humour. He was their man. It was no wonder the other base personnel avoided this part of the bar when one of their commanding officers had staked it out, and with the Colonel tossing back the hard stuff like that. The soldiers were off duty and relaxing, but they weren't suddenly stupid, even with all the drinking. Some lines were just never crossed. At least Noir and their contact would be granted some privacy in this otherwise hectic place.

The Corsican assassin appeared beside Colonel Dickson just as the bartender dubiously poured another shot-whiskey-and slid it to him. The Colonel was in his late forties perhaps and a touch overweight, his stomach hanging somewhat over his pants. His blonde hair, the thin amount he had left, was turning platinum with all the grey streaked through it, but it matched the lined and rugged face beneath. He was still in uniform, albeit dishevelled and sans cap, his jacket unbuttoned and his shirt collar and tie loose. The sweat on his brow was profuse, either from the alcohol or for another reason. Mireille suspected she knew that another reason.

"Something bothering you?" Mireille lightly taunted in English.

Colonel Dickson turned angrily, likely expecting an inferior being cute, but all authority drained from his demeanour at the sight of Mireille and Kirika. So he recognised them, or at least knew the name Noir and what it signified. He was almost certainly Soldats, or someone close to them that was privy to their world, the *real* world, and all of its terrors. Mireille supposed he felt he was face to face with one of those terrors.

"I... Nothing, nothing," the man downplayed; quick to adopt a hospitable, if nervous, manner in her and Kirika's presence. "Can I get you and, ah..." He looked at Kirika, seeing a girl where someone older should have been. "...Can I get you a drink?" he went with, his invitation for assassins over the age of twenty only.

"Tonic water and lime," Mireille said in Japanese to the lingering bartender. "Two of them."

The Okinawan bartender nodded, and shuffled off to get the drinks.

"I'm sorry we had to meet somewhere like this," the Colonel remarked, shooting glowers at his disorderly personnel, as though waiting for them to fall quiet despite being far from Kadena Air base and the chain of command. "I wanted it to be inconspicuous."

"They're just blowing off steam," Mireille said graciously while accepting her tonic water from the returning barman. "Everyone has their method of coping with their life." She turned her head to Kirika beside her, looking on fondly as the girl took an experimental swallow of her drink and pursed her lips a tiny bit at the bitter kick in the aftertaste.

"Hmph. Maybe," Colonel Dickson replied, his agreement obviously lipservice. He threw some scrunched up yen bills on the bar for Mireille and Kirika's refreshments, which the bartender appeared glad to snatch up so he could move on to customers in more jovial moods.

The blonde woman smirked coolly and had a sip of her drink herself. "How is Base Commander Hamilton?" she said coyly afterwards, studying the Colonel with a sidelong look.

Initially her remark seemed to stun Colonel Dickson, leaving him sitting there next to her silent and covered in his suddenly increasing sweat, but an instant later he was in control. "Not long for this world," he whispered hoarsely, and gulped down his latest whiskey shot.

Major General Miles Hamilton, the current commander of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. And like his second here, in league with Soldats. But not the Soldats that would have ensured he live past next week. The good Major General had sided with Ishinomori and her revolution, his disloyalty laid bare in Jacques reports, likely penned from a myriad of spies' and infiltrators' intelligence work, maybe Colonel Dickson included. The Major General was using his position and the air base's location and facilities to supply military grade weapons and the ammunition to go with them to the Soldats rebels. Was it for a profit, for his greed? Or was he a true visionary, believing that reform for the ancient clandestine organisation was in its, and the world's, best interest? His reasons hadn't been detailed, which likely meant they hadn't mattered to Jacques-to the Soldats of old. Only his guilt... and the penalty.

"Why now?" Mireille asked; all hardness now that the pleasantries were dispensed with. Clearly cutting off Kaede Ishinomori's armament deliveries would hurt her offensive, forcing her to eventually rely on smaller, lower grade arms that were more readily available on the blackmarket-a far cry from military hardware. Why hadn't Hamilton been removed sooner? Had Breffort been waiting for Noir to do the job right? Had the Major General simply covered his tracks well up until this point? It didn't add up. Soldats were better than this.

"It's the most opportune time," Dickson said, misunderstanding... or had he? He signalled the barman to give him another shot.

"That's not what I meant."

The Colonel waited for the bartender to fill his glass and leave, before turning to Mireille, his agitation reaching a higher notch. "Look, I don't have any answers. I just get you in there."

Mireille inclined her head with deliberate slowness, courteously accepting his ignorance for the time being. Perhaps he really didn't know anything. Perhaps he simply was that third party; the middle man; the facilitator. He seemed frightened enough to be a nobody in Soldats' grand scheme.

Colonel Dickson glanced to his left and then to his right, and then over his shoulder, apparently checking whether the coast was clear although by doing so probably had made himself *more* noticeable. Regardless, he appeared satisfied and furtively put his hand inside his blue jacket, taking out a USB drive. He put it on the bar between himself and the Corsican assassin, a finger lingering on it. "Maps you'll need."

Mireille put her index finger on the drive and started to drag it over to her, only to be stopped by the man pushing down harder on the device with his own finger. "*Only* the maps you'll *need*. Don't decide to take a sightseeing tour."

Mireille merely looked at the Colonel in the eye until he grudgingly relinquished the intel. She slid the USB drive towards her and slipped it away for safekeeping.

"Here." Colonel Dickson next placed a set of car keys on the bar. "It's the black four door SUV. Should be the only one out there. Take the bag on the backseat and leave the keys there; I'd like to be able to drive back to the base tonight."

"And what will we find in the 'bag in the backseat'?" Mireille said as she took the keys.

"*You* will find a uniform and ID." The Colonel leaned back on his stool, glancing around the blonde to Kirika on the other side of her. "Officers don't come her age."

Mireille would be on her own for this one, but with an air force base involved she hadn't expected to have her partner's backup. He was right-officers, *soldiers*, weren't Kirika's age. Assassins however, *killers*...

"How did you know my measurements?"

The man cleared his throat awkwardly. "They were given to me," he said, quickly draining his waiting shot of whiskey a second later.

Mireille tried not to wonder how Soldats knew them.

"Is there a chance I'll be recognised? What about surveillance? How far will the ID get me?" So many possible snags; snags the blonde would have normally seen to smoothing out herself. Instead she had to hope that someone she hadn't met before and didn't trust very much had looked into all the angles. Her safety net could turn into a noose without much tweaking.

"The ID will do what it has to, 'Major Winters'. You look too young, but no one will ask questions once you're inside. No one below your rank, anyhow," Dickson wearily explained, staring down at his empty glass in his hand and likely longing for it to be filled again. "And the CCTV network and some other key systems will conveniently be going through maintenance tomorrow morning. I heard they'll be down for a couple of hours. My authorisation, scheduled months in advance." He grinned at Mireille, smug about his accomplishment, and then looked away to his right, at his oblivious personnel relishing their off time. "They'll think they know you, but they won't. And they'll be no record of you ever being there. Nothing but their memory... and memories can easily be undermined and manipulated." Colonel Dickson upended the shot glass over his mouth, trying to capture any leftover drops.

"*Tomorrow*, you said?" Mireille caught, frowning at the man. *That* soon? The lack of prep time was unsettling, but not intimidating. Rushing however led to mistakes, to details overlooked, and sticky situations. Patience, planning; it wasn't out of fear that Mireille preferred a slow pace-it was what placed her among the best at what she did.

Colonel Dickson nodded. "It's the one, best, chance. A Major Charlie Winters is paying the base a visit tomorrow. He'll be delayed." He smirked, dark and sinister. "But *she*-*you*-won't be."

Mireille held her tongue a moment, having another sip of her drink instead. Perhaps this was why Breffort had waited. It was a providential turn of events... maybe *too* providential to be purely orchestrated by circumstance and fate. It was a sound plan, though... providing that Dickson delayed the real Major Winters for long enough. She had to depend on the flabby, alcoholic, treacherous man at her side for many factors, and without any insurance if the snags rose up to drag her down.

The blonde sighed. It wasn't as if she was going to say no.

"I'll have some Security Forces personnel pick you up at the train station near here. Major Winters was due to fly in directly, but I'll explain it away. The specifics are on the drive."

"Do your part," Mireille intoned levelly, staring at the rows of bottles and glasses on the shelves behind the bar, drink in hand. "Then we'll never have to see each other again." She finally directed the look at him, and he nodded warily under it. He understood.

Mireille had another mouthful of her tonic water and lime, and then put it down, sliding off her barstool. She spared a glance at Kirika, and saw that the girl had finished her glass. Maybe they'd found something she liked.

"Don't..." Dickson started abruptly, stalling Noir's departure. "Don't hurt anyone else. No collateral. Not these men. They aren't part of... this."

"Remember who we are," Mireille simply replied. There had never been a victim of hers that hadn't been necessary.

He bobbed his head in acknowledgement and was quiet a moment, but wasn't done. "A-And I'd appreciate it if you... destroyed the drive when it's over." Colonel Dickson seemed to swell up, his chest pushing out and his shoulders squaring. "I'm still a patriot," he said, or rather seemed to argue, and with himself. "I still love my country, even if I hold a second allegiance."

"I'm sure you're a credit to your nation," Mireille said in parting, and managing only a little irony with her thin smile.

Outside, Mireille found the Colonel's SUV and picked up the bag, the cover of night and the only eyes around mostly inebriated making the retrieval straightforward. For a second she had been about to hand it to Kirika, but then kept it in her possession. Kirika was more than a mule. She was a lot more.

The woman chucked the car keys in the backseat for Dickson to have fun searching for, and then shut the door and walked away. She remained quiet until The Locker became a memory, although the task tomorrow never strayed far from her thoughts.

"We never got that dessert," Mireille said, breaking the silence as she strolled down the street alongside Kirika towards their rental car. She shifted her blue eyes to her partner, peeking at her surreptitiously while her lips couldn't be stopped curving into a slight but indulgent smile. "Ice cream, wasn't it?"

"Mm," Kirika nodded, and a smile of her own blossomed faintly on her pretty face. "Ice cream."

The pleasure didn't have to be over. Paradise waited. You learned to take your leisure when and where you could. It was important... as important as the job itself. If the job was your life, if it was all you had, all your ever did or thought about, then your path would be as dark, as *black*, as it possibly could be. It would consume you. It would suck you into its darkness and darken you into a shade of your real self. You wouldn't be you anymore-you'd just be a murderer.

It wasn't letting your guard down-it was letting your hair down. There was a difference. It was a reminder that the killing wasn't all you were. That when you weren't holding your gun you had needs and desires like anybody else. That it *was* just a job.

Mireille knew the lesson well. In the time they were together her Uncle Claude had never ceased to remind her that she was still a young woman; that she still enjoyed fine foods and nice clothes, and that true bloodlust was reserved for simple murderers. The blonde felt Kirika needed the reminder more than she did. An assassin, a masterful assassin, was what Kirika was. But she needed to remember it wasn't *all* she was. She was still a girl underneath the training and after the bloodshed. The beach, the boutiques, the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners out-everything was to keep that person, that life, intact. Ultimately life was meant to be lived, enjoyed, no matter what path you walked.

Tomorrow work awaited. But tonight... Tonight hadn't ended.

* * *

"Major Winters?"

Her dark blue uniform a dead giveaway, the two MPs crisply saluted Mireille on the steps outside the train station, a gesture she returned with a much smaller measure of snap. She *was* meant to be a superior after all. She exuded casual disinterest, that air of authority and entitlement, hoping that it would keep small talk to a minimum if the soldiers believed she was the hardened, standoffish sort. There was the possibility one of them, or both, might have been at The Locker last night and could recall her face. That went for any of the personnel she may encounter on Kadena Air Base. Mireille had worn her sunglasses and had her hair pinned up regulation-style underneath her officer's hat, but those efforts wouldn't stand under prolonged scrutiny. She put most of her faith in the well-fitting uniform and the distance it afforded between grunt and officer-if she played the part right.

"We're here to take you to the base, ma'am."

Mireille nodded curtly, following them and getting into the back of the waiting topless military jeep at the curb only after one of the men opened the door for her. The MPs shared a look as they got into the front, a cross between tension and exasperation, no doubt wordlessly lamenting their duty and the new Major's snobby demeanour. Good.

The drive was short, basically a trip down a palm tree lined freeway. The air base was a sprawling installation that encroached not only on the town of Kadena but a couple of others too, and likely was an unavoidable fixture in the native residents' lives. A pair of fighter jets roared overhead, massive in the sky as they flew low above the freeway, deafening local traffic, 'Major' Mireille's ears no more sacred than the others. She could see how the American military's presence could grow tiresome on the Okinawan populace. At least they had spared the beaches.

The jeep turned off the road and pulled up to a gate complete with guard post, the entryway slotted in the middle of a never-ending chain link fence topped with razor wire coils, the unfriendly grey mesh separating the military and the US from the civilian and the Japanese. The jeep stopped as another partnership from the Air Force Security Forces wandered out of the guard post, one of which approaching the driver's side.

Seeing Mireille in the rear, the two guards saluted her, and she did the same to them, wondering how often she was going to have to keep doing that.

"Returning with Major Winters," the blonde's driver said.

"Major," the nearest guard greeted. "Your business here?"

"My business is with Major General Hamilton on certain administration matters," Mireille said evenly, flashing her ID card like she had been through the motion a thousand times before. 'Administration matters' was what the real Major Winters was coming here for at any rate, as reported on Colonel Dickson's USB drive. It had sounded pretty vague when she'd first read it; she hoped it would fly, but would improvise if she had to. Thinking on her feet would be nothing new. "I am expected."

"Ah, right..." the guard nodded, putting his hands on his hips as he relaxed. "I remember seeing your name. I have to apologise ma'am; our computer network has been down since we started shift."

"We'll log the Major's arrival later," the other gate soldier spoke up, leaning in the doorway of the little guard post.

"No harm," Mireille said with a tight smile. Dickson had been true to his word. If he hadn't been, the Corsican assassin would have taken care of the cameras herself, even if that had meant a detour into security before going after her target. She might have taken a second detour later also, to another high ranking soldier's office.

"Welcome to Kadena Air Base, Major," the first guard said, before taking a few steps back and waving her vehicle through.

The thin metal barrier hanging across the road painted in eye-catching black and white stripes lifted, permitting the jeep to move onwards. The driver took it slow now that they were inside the fences, but the administration building was close, near the front of the base. The MPs carefully ferried Mireille to the nearly completely vacant carpark reserved for visitors, and came to a halt in a space directly in front of the administration building's door.

"Here we are, ma'am."

The Air Force Security Forces member in the front passenger seat quickly exited to open the jeep's rear door for Mireille, and the woman stepped out.

"The meeting will be short," she said as she straightened her jacket and cap. "Wait here, if you could." Her clipped tone made it known that she wasn't asking.

A murmured chorus of 'yes ma'am' sounded, the men used to orders, and Mireille marched briskly to the waiting doors behind which her-no, *Soldats*-target waited. So far so good, but you weren't really tested until you drew your weapon.

For a second Mireille forgot about her goal and thought of Kirika, feeling her absence. The girl's presence had been reassuring the blonde realised; it was strange to be alone. She relied on her partner; to catch the details she missed, to watch her back, to help keep her alive when things got heated... to keep her company. Now Mireille only had herself. She had handled assignments solo for most of her life; it should've been second nature now; yet... She felt a twinge of vulnerability. Perhaps she had been relying on Kirika *too* much. She had let herself slip.

Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe it wasn't about the job, but about... *her*. Kirika. Mireille just missed Kirika, not because of what she brought to an assignment, but for what she brought to her heart.

The Corsican assassin stopped in front of the doors, closing her eyes for an instant. She had to focus. It wasn't the time to be a... a woman. It wasn't the time for those other facets of her life. It was time for work. The job. Whatever the reason for her pining, the fact remained that Kirika *did* protect her, and the petite assassin wasn't here. Mireille had to keep her head and forget her heart. For now.

* * *

Kirika darted between buildings, barracks and supply sheds, avoiding open spaces until she could no longer, and then bolting across them to waiting cover on the other side when everyone's eyes were elsewhere. She stayed low, hunched over to half her height, her civilian attire-a sky blue summer dress-too striking for mistakes. But she didn't make mistakes; not in this. Keeping hidden, no ploys but sticking to the shadows, to blindspots, moving among people as a ghost, as though she wasn't there-as though she didn't exist. Kirika was good at this.

Sneaking into the air base had been easy. The cameras were off, and razor wire wasn't a deterrent if you were willing to endure a few cuts, which Kirika had been. Her bare forearms bled little, superficial wounds from her aerial cartwheel over the military installation's fencing, and were already crusting. The soldiers hadn't proved to be a sterner threat than everyday criminals and sinners either, almost lax within their refuge. They didn't have her discipline. They didn't have what she felt.

The blades hadn't slowed the girl for a moment, nor had the thought of what they could do to her flesh. Nor had the thought of soldiers with their combat training and access to high-powered firearms. Kirika moved with purpose, maintaining a swift yet silent pace, pausing only to survey the route ahead and time her scurrying. She had some catching up to do.

Mireille had said to wait. She had said she'd be back. Kirika had heard her partner, but had listened to something else over her. Kirika had been meant to stay in the hotel room, and then at the train station after Mireille had reluctantly given in and consented to her tagging along as far as she could. The blonde had assumed that to be as far as the station and her military escort, however she had underestimated Kirika. The girl could follow her love anywhere, into anything; to the ends of the earth. Even angels needed guardians.

Remembering the base map she had glimpsed over Mireille's shoulder; alight on the woman's laptop screen last night; Kirika progressed towards the administration block where the target was-and where Mireille was due as executioner. Kirika believed in her partner's ability, and realised the blonde would probably resent being babysat, but she had a vow to uphold... and a heart that wouldn't calm until she laid her eyes on her love again.

Kirika came to a sharp halt crouched at the side of a building, and peeked around the corner into a carpark she knew was there. It was virtually empty, and the jeep she had seen at the train station and pursued in a taxi was the first thing her gaze honed in on. The soldiers who had accompanied Mireille lounged in the front seats, chatting amicably. Their ease meant the blonde wasn't nearby.

Kirika's eyes nipped all over the area to confirm, but it was immediately clear she had missed her partner's arrival-the woman was inside the building that housed Major General Hamilton's office already. She had to move.

The darkhaired assassin burst into motion, rounding the corner and tracing the next wall, along the front of the building that faced the carpark, as it led towards its neighbour that Mireille had entered. There was shade this close to the wall, but there were windows also, forcing Kirika to remain stooped as she past beneath them. She looked in the direction of the jeep often, gauging whether she had been detected by the two soldiers there. However, they were too deep in carefree conversation to notice a lone girl sidle into an alleyway, and by then she was out of their possible sight.

Kirika went further into the gap between the two air force buildings, counting the lower windows and her footsteps, measuring both to the floorplan in her mind. She stopped underneath one particular window, thankful the Major General did his work on the ground level. There the assassin, the girl, waited. And listened. She heard muffled speech-a single voice; deep meaning male. It was even, not yet distressed. She wasn't too late.

Kirika tugged the end of her dress up over her right knee and all the way back to her hip, exposing her fully loaded Beretta M1934 with silencer strapped to her thigh.

Even angels needed guardians.

* * *

"Major General Hamilton is ready for you, ma'am."

Mireille donned her cap and got up from the couch, straightening her skirt afterward. She doubted the Major General was truly ready for her. Yet he *was* Soldats; perhaps he had gotten wind of his coming end. It wouldn't matter though-now that she was here, it was over for him.

The Major General's fair-haired secretary motioned with an arm towards one particular corridor that led away from the foyer. She may have had secretarial duties, but she was still dressed as an officer, and was probably armed like one too. There were several people equipped with a firearm nearby Mireille-Air Force Security Forces soldiers standing rigid at their posts mainly, each with a Beretta M9 in their hip holsters, safeties off. Occasionally a low ranking officer would wander through and add to the weapons tally, although the blonde didn't notice many of them openly fitted with a sidearm.

Mireille might have got away with carrying hers too where anyone could see it, but despite her slim military knowledge she was certain a silencer wasn't standard Air Force issue. Still, at her 'rank' she was expected to be armed, if only as a status symbol. It was strange to walk past guards and not be questioned or frisked-her uniform really did keep everyone theoretically inferior to her at bay.

With that assurance Mireille briskly headed down the indicated corridor, passing a final MP before coming to Hamilton's door. She knocked and waited for his answer. It came immediately; a gruff bark to come in; and she opened the door, wary in case he was, and if his wariness would compel him to shoot at her on sight.

Major General Hamilton was behind his desk, so engrossed in scrawling his pen across a stack of papers he shuffled through that he didn't even look up. The old man was dressed much like her, in the USAF's blue, except the rank insignia on his shoulders bore two silver stars each instead of a solitary gold leaf. His peaked cap; different from the blonde's female version; sat on a shelf behind him, near a window covered by halfway shut blinds.

Mireille closed the door behind her, but maintained her eye on her careless target while she did. The click of it shutting stirred the Major General into finally lifting his head, and he frowned at who he saw in his office.

"You're not Winters," he said, his pen freezing in his hand above yet another document.

Mireille said nothing as she reached inside her jacket for her shoulder holster, drawing her suppressed Walther P99.

Hamilton's eyes bulged and he hastily fumbled for a desk drawer, no doubt going for a weapon. However, in those eyes the Corsican saw that he recognised his doom was upon him. He was just going through the motions; a kneejerk reflex-the survival instinct of a cornered creature. Some resigned themselves when the time came, some didn't, but they always knew it was the end on some level, deep down, even if they didn't want to tell themselves that. Mireille had seen it on countless occasions. This man was no different despite the rank he held, despite that he was in a bastion of military might and security. He knew it was coming and that nothing would stop it. But after all that was her-Noir's-trademark.

Mireille put two in Major General Hamilton's chest-half an inch apart, left side. The shots rocked the man back in his chair, and then sent him spilling lifelessly over his desk. Blood spread from underneath his chest, pooling over the desktop and soaking into his now trivial paperwork. Soldats and the rebels had lost an agent both, the US military had lost a commander, but the world was rid of a thorn... although one thorn removed from a briar patch was a minor thing.

"Sir? Are you alright, sir?"

Mireille heard the concerned voice of what was probably the nearby MP through the closed office door, followed by knocking that gradually grew more alarmed. She calmly yet quickly stepped to one side, arranging herself flush against the wall next to the doorway.

The door opened and the soldier gasped at the spectacle of his base commander bleeding face down all over his desk, halting a step inside the room, hand resting on his sidearm. Mireille greeted the unlucky young man with the silenced barrel of her pistol held an inch away from under his chin. She pulled the trigger before he realised his predicament, a bullet tearing through his oral cavity and then through his brain, a circular spray of blood suddenly splattering against the ceiling above him. He fell like a marionette with its strings abruptly cut, his once dark blue beret now a deep claret.

The blonde assassin angled her head around the doorway, checking the hallway-no one was there; no one had seen.

Mireille stepped over the body, and then turned back to kick the MP's legs inside the office with the rest of him, before closing the door to hide the bloodshed for a while. She hid her Walther P99 inside her jacket once more and walked back into the foyer, past the secretary who barely acknowledged her, and outside into the carpark.

"Back to the station," Mireille ordered at soon as sunlight hit her, wiping the grins from the two procrastinating soldiers in the jeep as they jumped to accommodate her and readopt military decorum.

The woman got into the backseat; the passenger door opened for her once again with some more saluting; and was driven back to the gate and guard post. The barrier was lowered again, and the jeep squeaked to a standstill before it.

"Leaving us so soon, ma'am?" the gate guard that had welcomed Mireille earlier commented with a smile and salute.

"They always have me on the move," Mireille replied wryly, returning the salute, "but I always make my appointments."

The soldier looked over his shoulder to his partner in the guard post, no doubt to get him to raise the gate, however found him on the post's phone. The second MP lifted his free hand, palm out, in a gesture to wait. His face looked confused and anxious.

"What's going on?" the first guard shouted to him.

Mireille's right hand inched over her lap, then higher to her chest-to the opening of her jacket. Her instincts were rarely wrong, and they warned her now. Her MP escort in the front of the jeep seemed perplexed like their comrades, however it wouldn't last once the report came in over that phone. Then their Berettas would come out, courtesy and subservience would vanish, and the 'Major' would lose all of her rank privileges. Did Mireille strike now while they were still in a state of uncertainty; take out her escort with a pair of shots through the backs of their seats right this second, then another pair for the gate guards before they could bring their own pistols to bear? Or did she wait in case she was simply a victim of paranoia? The guard could be on the phone to his girlfriend for all she really knew... Or sirens were about to go off, and Kadena Air Base was on the verge of being locked down, the hunt for a fake United States Air Force officer, a young blonde woman, commencing.

Keen intuition warred with hopeful reason within Mireille, her own survival instinct kicking in. She wondered what her eyes looked like behind her sunglasses.

* * *

Kirika pointed her Beretta M1934 at the female soldier. The woman trembled before the barrel's one-eyed glare, though the phone was still at her ear, the hand that held it white from the ferocity of her grip.

"Belay that..." the officer whispered, her voice a breath; hardly there, as though the life was already leaving her. "I made a mistake."

The phone slipped through her suddenly weakened hand, more of her life waning, but she caught it against her chest. Her eyes never left Kirika as she slowly and feebly lowered it onto the receiver.

There was a click as the phone settled, penetrating the silence like a bell's toll.

"Thank you," the assassin said. Her tone was so very everyday, but it was no platitude she had spoken. Kirika *was* grateful. The delay she had instigated would be sixty seconds with luck; however any number of seconds was precious-and enough. Mireille would be in the clear. She would be safe.

Kirika's breathing changed; it was as if a tight band had been loosened from around her chest. It was still there, and wouldn't go altogether until she saw Mireille's face again, but it ceased to strangle her heart.

The girl took a quiet breath, inhaling fully, and then let it out just as slow. She smiled softly.

Kirika's eyes sharpened, the soldier within them remembered-or more accurately, brought to the front of her mind. The woman was a statue now, staring at her in a sort of focused daydream. It was like her life had been put on pause; had stopped for this moment; and was waiting for permission to resume-permission from Kirika.

[*This* is your power. But they all deserve the same. There is no such thing as innocence in this world... No innocence that lasts...]

The soldier was dressed like Mireille; in the same kind of uniform Mireille had worn at the train station. Her straight long hair was yellow like Mireille's too, but a more vivid shade like mustard in place of sand. Kirika became a statue as well, examining the similarities.

It lasted only a fraction of a second.

The officer closed her eyes before the shot, sensing her death. She had probably hoped for her life to continue, but Kirika couldn't let it. The woman fell behind her desk, her head snapping back with the force of the bullet entering. Fine red mist lingered for an instant at head height in the air where she had stood, and then was gone.

Kirika's right arm dropped to her side, smoke lazily curling from the end of her Beretta's silencer. She had to think about her own escape now; the administration building's foyer likely saw regular traffic-she couldn't dawdle. However, thinking about getting out of Kadena Air Base didn't cause her trepidation-even with the inevitable installation-wide alarm and lockdown, it would be as much challenge as it had been getting in.

The darkhaired assassin turned to the front entrance, jogging past the bodies of three MPs lying in still puddles of their own blood. 9mm casings were on the floor nearby, not one belonging to them.

* * *

The Security Forces soldier in the guard post shook his head and hung up the phone. "False alarm," he called to his fellow MP, pressing the button to raise the gate.

The guard at the side of the jeep snorted. "And just when I thought this day wasn't going to be as dull as every other," he longsuffering quipped. "Goodbye, Major." He waved the jeep and Mireille inside on, before trotting back into the guard post.

Mireille's right hand dropped to her lap and she forced herself to breathe more calmly. The jeep turned onto the freeway, joining the stream of other vehicles. She was out. Had it been paranoia after all? 'False alarm' indeed.

"I can't believe they don't fly you in," the driver spoke up, perhaps emboldened by the gate guard's slight candour with her.

Mireille smiled tritely at him in the rearview mirror. "I'm only one woman," she said.

* * *

Mireille picked up the US Air Force officer's jacket from their hotel room's bed, holding it up to her body and striking a strange sort of pose, kind of slanted and her chest pushed out. "Perhaps I should hang onto it."

Kirika looked up from her packing to her partner over at the opposite side of the bed. The blonde had changed out of the military attire in a toilet stall at the train station immediately after being dropped off by the US soldiers, along with releasing her hair from its compact style and taking off her sunglasses, all to shed the persona of an Air Force officer as quickly as she was able-there had been, and still was, a high likelihood the US Air Force were searching for a flaxen-headed Major, not to mention wandering about town dressed up like one wasn't the same as doing it in a military environment. The best move Kirika thought would have been to leave the uniform and the ID in its bag in the stall; however Mireille had for some reason brought everything with them back to the hotel. It had puzzled the girl, but she had assumed the woman would get rid of the disguise at some stage before they left Okinawa by means that satisfied her. There weren't any tracking devices or bugs of any kind hidden away in the material-Mireille had scanned the bag and everything within it as soon as she'd had the opportunity-but there was a chance the uniform, and especially the ID with the woman's photo in it stating she was someone she wasn't, could be traced back to them if the wrong person happened to catch a glimpse.

Maybe Mireille was just joking. She did joke a lot and Kirika didn't often understand all she meant. Or maybe she felt the disguise would be useful in the future. The woman *was* smart, always thinking ahead. Still, it was a risk.

"Maybe you could use it again... someday..." Kirika offered anyway. She wanted to be supportive. And there *was* something about how Mireille looked when she was wearing the full uniform. She looked... nice. But Mireille always looked nice. Kirika just knew that she didn't dislike how Mireille looked in it, and that was all.

Mireille laid the jacket back down, snatching up the hat instead. She walked around the end of the bed and slid it over Kirika's head, smiling crookedly at the result. "It's not bad on you, either."

Kirika rolled her eyes upwards, staring at the peak that poked over her brow. Maybe Mireille didn't dislike how she looked in the outfit either. The girl couldn't think where the blonde could wear it though outside of another assignment that called for visiting American military installations.

"What happened to you?" Mireille said suddenly, grabbing Kirika's left wrist and lifting the shorter young woman's bare arm closer to her face.

Kirika swallowed uneasily as Mireille's eyes went from cut to cut, and then seized her other wrist to lift her right arm up for a similar inspection.

"Where did you get these?"

"On a fence," Kirika answered honestly. She didn't think to lie.

Mireille looked up from the girl's rent arms to her staring reddish-brown eyes. The scars hadn't been there yesterday on the beach, nor had they been there this morning; and Kirika had arrived late to the train station following the assassination, only linking up with her partner as the woman had been leaving the restroom. Mireille wasn't stupid.

Mireille was silent for several long moments. Then she released Kirika's wrists and walked back to the other side of the bed, leaving the girl standing there. "Take more care," she said quietly, facing away from Kirika.

"Mm. I'm sorry," Kirika replied just as softly, feeling guilty although she wasn't sure why.

Mireille glanced out the window, the beach and the ocean and the sky outside. She sighed.

* * *

The roar of the C-130 Hercules' engines lowered to a collective whine, and the cargo door at the rear of the plane deployed outwards, serving as a ramp leading down to the runway. First out was the crew, escorting the crates of various supplies into the hands of waiting base staff, but their scheduled arrival wasn't what had Colonel Dickson here on the tarmac. Weaving around the flight crew and the cargo appeared a group of men that didn't wear USAF uniforms, or any uniform, but the way they carried themselves spoke of years of dedicated military training.

"Colonel," greeted the man that walked ahead of all the others as he neared, raising his voice above the engines. He was slightly older than Colonel Dickson; his slicked back long hair and his bushy moustache and beard that looked as coarse as a horse's mane silver with age, and his face with as many creases as an old catcher's mitt.

"Captain," Dickson answered with the same measure of friendliness, shaking hands with the other man. They weren't friends, however. They just knew the same people. They lived in the same world. Casimir Novković wasn't even a Captain, nor did he hold any rank whatsoever, at least not officially in a legitimate fighting force. But he liked to be addressed as such, and Dickson knew who it was best to keep on good terms with.

"Not the most pleasant ride, crammed in that tin can," Novković remarked, turning back to the Hercules. His English had a thick Slavic influence-Croatia he told people he was from, but Colonel Dickson was pretty sure that was a lie. He was a Serb, probably old Yugoslav People's Army, or the Army of Republika Srpska as it had become back in his day almost twenty years ago. Novković had reason to hide his identity, the things he had done back then. 'Casimir Novković' likely wasn't even his real name; it probably belonged to a corpse in a yet to be discovered mass grave somewhere in what was now Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"You could have flown Air France," Dickson said. Hitching a ride with the Hercules had been the quickest and most discreet means for Novković's team to reach Japan while carrying their personal small arms. He should've been thanking his lucky stars he was able to disembark here at Kadena, and for the hospitality Dickson was showing. Novković would have access to the base's weapons and other supplies before he moved on to wherever he was bound-if Major General Hamilton were still in charge Novković and everyone with him would be being bundled away in a sack right about now and secretly dumped out onto the street instead, or the equivalent at any rate. Noir had come through though, removing an obstacle to Soldats and pushing Dickson into the base commander's seat for the time being. The young women had been easy to manipulate just as he had been told. Poor Hamilton hadn't even heard of the name Soldats, let alone had the fortune to have been a part of them. But Dickson of course had and was, and now although Kadena Air Base flew the stars and stripes still, it for all intents and purposes belonged to the world order just like its new commander, rather than holding allegiance to a mere solitary, fallible, nation.

"Not much better I think!" Novković joked, compelling Colonel Dickson to force a short laugh.

"You picked an interesting time to come to this country," Dickson said. He didn't push for details, but the question was still there. Indirect, subtle... What you had to be when Soldats were involved. Life in the US military had thankfully greatly curbed the urge to question, all but snuffing it out of him.

"Ah, yes. That business," the silver-haired man replied, bobbing his head a little. "We are here for a different reason."

"We're book detectives," one of Novković's 'soldiers' scoffed derisively behind his captain, his tone leaving little mystery to how he felt about the mission.

"But money is money," Novković said, lenient with his man's outspokenness, at least while here on the runway of a US air base. "It is not strictly a..." He strained to explain, but Colonel Dickson understood. They weren't really here for Soldats.

"Right, right," Dickson said, sparing himself the other man's struggle with his English vocabulary. He then paused for a second, choosing his next words carefully as to not seem too curious, but only sociable. "Do you have an idea where to start looking?"

"We go to Kawasaki."

* * *

To be continued...

Author's ramblings:

I hope I got the US military stuff right! Gomen if I didn't~!

I hope the assassination was acceptable too. I guess they can't all degenerate into massive shootouts with crazy bodycounts... unfortunately! ^_^


	25. The Routine

Red And Black - By Kirika

* * *

The twenty-fifth chapter. I'm back! ^_^

- Kirika

* * *

Chapter 25 - The Routine

"I just need a little more time. Just a little. I have the money."

Ichiro Inamine cracked another walnut over the mewling. He pushed the shell fragments with the edge of one hand to the pile that had begun to amass on his desk and popped the edible nut's centre into his mouth. He chewed slowly. He made no attempt to mask his cruel mirth as the walnut crunched beneath his grinding jaws. His sly, smug half-smile was a premonition of things to come, of future dominance and authority over this grovelling trash, this sheep of society that expected charity from wolves.

Ichiro swallowed, his smile growing. His bared teeth were predatory, glinting in the low light, unabashed to show his willingness to abuse that authority. His grey eyes stared, cold but hungry, already tipsy at the prospect.

He reached for another walnut.

It was a clichéd song and dance, as familiar as it was stale. But the client's tired, rambling narrative still brought the smile to Ichiro's face and the sparkle to his eyes; as long as the storyteller changed it was a tale worth hearing again and again. This person sitting before the gangster's desk might as well have been on his *knees*, bowing at Ichiro's feet. The client-'Katsuya Morishita'-was not much more than a name in a ledger to the yakuza leader. But that Morishita's name was written in that ledger, and moreover that his account was long overdue with no sign of being settled, meant that Ichiro's power over the salaryman was absolute. As soon as Morishita's name had dipped into the red ink, Ichiro had become his king and he the gangster's serf, scraping at Ichiro's throne, pleading for his liege's leniency. They never learned. You couldn't expect to deal with the devil and not get burned.

This was the business to be in. This was what to do when you had cash to play with. The lending game. Not investments that take a lifetime to pay dividend, or wipe you out completely without recompense; not the banks with their bullshit and pathetic interest rates-blue chip, term deposits; it was all for the gullible. Loan sharking, where *you* were the bank, where *you* set the rates, was what the smart business men chose. Ichiro was one of those men.

For the clients however, it was for the foolish and the desperate. The house would always win, just like it did at the blackjack, craps and roulette tables on the other side of Ichiro's office door and at the pachinko parlour front outside that makeshift gambling den. It was the same game the whole time, the clientele more and more feverish the closer they came to being inside the gangster's office; they were like addicts unable to help themselves from digging deeper holes to fall in, deeper graves to lie in. In his office the punters just dispensed with the illusion of cards and dice and chance, did away with the pretence of fun and glamour and the expectation of coming out on top, and forked over their cash directly into the yakuza's pockets. It worked for Ichiro. A smart man would think the sheep would catch on. But the hopeful and the hopeless still shuffled in, savings clutched to their chests, willing to wager their lifeline, willing to bet everything they had on big dreams. The clients invariably ended up paying more than they bargained for-and more than they thought they had. Ichiro would claim it all, claim every facet of their lives-he would claim their souls if he could hawk them later. Not all debts were settled in coin. Too late did the sheep realise that.

"Really. I can get it all."

Case in point.

Ichiro squeezed his fist closed, the shiny steel nutcracker in it splitting a walnut shell with a snap. Beyond his office's windowless walls a muffled cheer went up-a winning roll, a trumping hand or a fluky spin to entice, to garner trust... the con before lady luck turned around and revealed herself as the cold bitch she really was. "You *have* the money... or you can *get* it?" The young yakuza boss snorted derisively, glancing at his nearest junior to share his belittling grin for Morishita and get another in return. "I'm confused. Are you confused, Ogami?"

"I'm confused, Kumicho," Ogami said on cue from where he was lounging on the office's sofa, idly playing mah-jong on the round coffee table with a couple other Kooen-kai brothers. He had a smirk on his face as he mixed the mah-jong tiles, knowing the act-they had played it out in front of dozens of other clients many times before.

"I can *get* it," Morishita rephrased. He was sweating in his boring grey suit and visibly swallowed and twisted his neck, as if his shirt collar and necktie was throttling him.

"Well that's good. Because I have this document here-" Ichiro opened a dog-eared manila folder that sat on his desk for just this exact reason and thumbed through the pages until he found the one Morishita had signed. "-a *contract*, that states..." Ichiro snorted again as he looked at the paper, as if only seeing the figure the salaryman owed for the first time, "...that you owe a shit-ton of money, Mr. Morishita. And you have for a while. That is your signature and mark, right? Your blood and thumbprint?"

The yakuza pushed the contract forward on his desk, so that Morishita's name and the red splotch that was the bloody imprint of his right thumb was unmistakable, even in the dim light and smoky atmosphere of the backroom office. Sealed in blood-indeed akin to a deal with the devil himself.

"L-Look, I'm doing everything I can, but my company isn't paying out overtime anymore, and in this economic downturn-!"

"With the interest," Ichiro continued, raising his voice over the stammering client and returning the contract to its place in the folder, "it's roughly seven hundred thousand yen that you owe us." It was quite the sum for a salaryman to accrue. However this salaryman had had a young girlfriend with expensive tastes and the need to keep her. *Had* had a young girlfriend. She had run off when the money had run dry, no doubt to someone younger and better looking... or to someone with a fatter wallet. The Kooen-kai wouldn't be so swift to cut Morishita loose. Ichiro trusted the guy had enjoyed himself, as he would be getting fucked in a totally different and much less pleasant way from now on. Big dreams... Big nightmares.

"B-B-But it was five hundred thousand a week ago!" Morishita squeaked in his chair in front of the loan shark's desk, leaning towards his vanishing contract to gape at it in disbelief.

Ichiro closed the folder fiendishly, denying him. "That was a week ago. We, too, have been affected by this ailing economy. Right, Ogami?"

"Right, Kumicho."

Ichiro shrugged his shoulders in feigned helplessness. A lie, of course. Business was good. Business in this game was always good. And in a weak economy when people were losing their homes let alone their fickle girlfriends, it was not an exaggeration to say it was booming. It was never a bad thing to have a surplus of cash, and with what had been going on in the streets of late a wad of notes in your pocket was probably a man's best friend at the minute. Nearly every gang in the Sumiyoshi-kai was fighting each other to be top dog with the Sosai and Kaicho both doing hard time and everyone else of distinction carted off with them to a life behind bars-or were dead after the Yamaguchi-gumi blitz into Kanto. Ichiro had even heard rumours that their Kansai rivals were making a move on Tokyo-ballsy, and an outright declaration of total war if there was any truth to it. The major turf in Tokyo had belonged to the Sumiyoshi-kai for as long as memory persisted, and would always belong to them regardless of which gang a newly elected interim Sosai would be affiliated with. It was tradition. It was home.

Though Ichiro himself couldn't care less. The Kooen-kai was lying low with the bloody landscape out there, maintaining their lender rackets and underground gambling rings as if the world wasn't on fire right now. Ichiro had no interest in possessing the crown of the Sumiyoshi-kai-surviving, prospering, was just fine with him. The Sumiyoshi-kai was a union of yakuza groups and clans, and no particular one would ever gain ultimate leadership or dominance. The other gangs would remember that sooner or later, once they got tired of the killing and the dying. Yet until then it was gunshots in the night and blood on the pavement-and that was without even mentioning the Yamaguchi-gumi and their incursion. The Sumiyoshi-kai was tearing itself apart.

Ichiro could sit on his hands and wait it out with the Sumiyoshi-kai, but the Yamaguchi-gumi situation could not simply be ignored with the similar hopes it would fix itself. If the Kansai yakuza really were gunning for Tokyo, there would be no hiding, no waiting. No one's turf would be safe. The current climate of the Sumiyoshi-kai made it a prime time to strike, with almost every gang of the confederation out for their own interests, dozens of different groups in civil conflict. Alone, they would be easily picked off by the Yamaguchi-gumi juggernaut.

Ichiro didn't like it and knew that the Sumiyoshi-kai had to be whole to weather the invasion... however... he was pragmatic. He was not about to lead the charge, to unite the clans, to stick his neck out and be the first head to be chopped. If everyone was out for themselves, then so too would he be. There was no hiding from the Yamaguchi-gumi and to oppose them single-handedly was to lose, but *negotiation*... a bargain perhaps wasn't out of the realm of possibility. The Kooen-kai's allegiance to the Sumiyoshi-kai umbrella had been a profitable arrangement for years, but all things were susceptible to change. Even tradition saw its end sooner or later. Even home. Ultimately it was about business. It was about making money. Ichiro made money. He could make money for the Yamaguchi-gumi just as he had for the Sumiyoshi-kai. Honour, tradition, family-they were nice ideals, but from an ancient era when they really mattered. Today the yakuza was like any other corporation. Money made the world go round, including the underworld.

A deal could be struck. A contract to ensure the Kooen-kai's survival should the Yamaguchi-gumi ravage the other Kanto gangs' holdings in Yokohama. However in an honourless world what guarantee did Ichiro have that he would not be muscled out of his leadership role at a later date after a Yamaguchi-gumi victory? Or rubbed out utterly, another bullet-ridden corpse on the street? Why would a king bargain with a serf he could simply crush beneath his heel? Ichiro knew the hazards of deals with devils and would not fall prey to them.

There was another option. An option Ichiro had entertained for the past week. The Sumiyoshi-kai was in chaos, the Yamaguchi-gumi were a devil he knew but still a devil with horns and claws. And then there was the new player in Japan's underworld. The group was nameless, more than a rumour but maybe less than truth. Foreign, the word on the street whispered. Russians, people said. No, they were American. No, it was the Italians others insisted. No, they spoke French, it's a French syndicate. A professional outfit in any case, military discipline and the hardware to back it up, weaponry of the likes Japan's criminal organisations rarely saw. Ichiro thought it was probably the Russians or some other Eastern European group; they were usually hardcore. Yet no one seemed to know why they needed machine guns and grenades or the battles they waged with them or the turf they gained from the secret skirmishes. It seemed their turf belonged to no one, not any yakuza affiliation, and was worth nothing or was nowhere to be seen at all. There was buzz that the foreigners had had a hand in the recent Yokohama courthouse anarchy, but who could say for certain? People had a tendency to pull shit out of their asses and tell you it was roses.

People also said the group was fronted by a small yakuza clan, the Kanagawa Koutetsu. Ichiro was vaguely aware of the name; they were not linked to any of the major Japanese crime groups that dominated the country. Other people also said that the Kanagawa Koutetsu were instead enemies of the foreigners, were in ruin from feuding with them. Disturbing for what Ichiro was weighing up, if that report was accurate. Deals with foreigners were typically distrusted, and deals with westerners more so. Gangs had been made outcasts for their offshore associations before, and seldom did they reap the rich rewards of the alliance for long. The Koreans, the Chinese, alright; but not with the western underworld. Maybe it was the cultural differences, but the yakuza had learned to regret western interference.

It would be a gamble. Siding with foreigners always was. Ichiro never gambled, he only bet to win. He had discussed it with his closest brothers, and they too felt the threat of the Yamaguchi-gumi and the vulnerability of the Sumiyoshi-kai-and the salvation the new blood on Japan's shores could be. The Kooen-kai could usurp the Kanagawa Koutetsu's place as liaison to the foreigners if the position was genuine, could profit from their profit, maybe get their sticky fingers on some of those high-tech shooters and get into the arms dealing business. No one would fuck with the Kooen-kai if they were packing that kind of firepower, not even the Yamaguchi-gumi. Big dreams, though... Ichiro would need to think on it more.

Ichiro cracked open another walnut. "We've been patient, Mr. Morishita." The humour, scornful thought it had been, was noticeably gone from the gangster's voice. You only toyed with your prey for so long. "I've been patient. We gave you a week. And then another. Now, none of us have patience."

"Please, Mr. Inamine... I-"

"You write with your left hand, don't you," Ichiro casually interjected.

"What?"

"You're left-handed. I've noticed. When you go to work, you use your left hand to write your reports and shit."

"Uh, y-yes..."

Ichiro's gaze shifted minutely to Ogami. He popped the walnut into his mouth as Ogami signalled another brother who was monitoring the gambling hall's security camera feeds on the other side of the office. The two men advanced on either side of a frightened Morishita, as wolves did on wounded quarry. From behind, Ogami leaned over and wrapped an arm around the suddenly bucking salaryman's neck, holding him in place in the chair, while the other yakuza-Tashiro-seized Morishita's flailing right forearm. The limb shuddered as he feebly fought to resist, and it was slowly that Tashiro forced Morishita's arm onto Ichiro's desk, but force it he did.

Tashiro lifted his knee to the desk and put it on Morishita's forearm, pinning the limb beneath his body weight, and with his now free hands started to prise open the salaryman's tightly clenched right fist until he had the first finger out and exposed. A woman late on her payments subsidised the interest with her body. Men bartered with their body too but in a different fashion; a fashion that brought only slightly less pleasure to Ichiro.

Ichiro ate one more nut before he sat forwards and closed the steel nutcracker's teeth around Morishita's finger. As if it were simply another walnut on his desk to be cracked, the yakuza squeezed his fist shut.

Morishita howled and bawled as his fingers were broken one by one, his voice mingling with the cheers of the gamblers outside. As soon as a crunch was heard, as soon as skin split and bone fractured and blood spilt, Tashiro fished out another unlucky finger from the bunch with practiced ease. It wasn't anyone's first time at this unless you counted Morishita. The economy was bad after all.

"You have earned another week's extension," Ichiro said as he wiped off the bloody nutcracker with a handtowel. It would still be fine for the walnuts. "Work hard."

Morishita was sobbing and staring agape at his mangled right hand as Ogami and Tashiro hauled his stiff form out of the chair and to the door. He'd get the money... sooner or later. Hopefully sooner for his sake. Morishita needn't fear for his life however, though it would be an able motivator for him to cough up what he owed. Ichiro was always loath to liquidate a client unless they were a real deadbeat with no earning power whatsoever. Or they pissed him off. A dead man wasn't profitable, just like somebody that was too badly tortured to toil in their day job. Plus Morishita had no family-no one to inherit the debt. If there was a sibling, or a good-looking wife or daughters, or anyone at all, then when he ran out of bones to break Katsuya Morishita would find his life had run out too, and his loved ones would be charged to pay what he had not. It really was a shame the salaryman was by himself. If he had any family collateral Ichiro would be putting the pressure on them as well at this point, what with the Morishita account this bloated and overdue. The more sheep in the herd the better.

As the office door was opened Ichiro saw his next potential client in the hall, being frisked by his man, Aoyama, at watch. It would be a challenge for anyone, any man, to overlook her. The new visitor was a young blonde woman, a westerner, dressed like she didn't need to be at a loan shark's doorstep and beautiful enough to name her price in a hostess bar. Ichiro would have to wrestle her club's name out of her-that was likely where she had come from, especially if she was turning up in the yakuza's neck of the woods. Foreign women that settled in Japan to work and were not tied to a corporation or any other 'legitimate' place of employment usually ended up in one of the thousands of hostess bars, an exotic flavour for the locals bent that way. If the hostess bar was straight then the job was just a job, more respectable than a stripper's work, however Ichiro was well aware of Sumiyoshi-kai run clubs that forced their girls to do more than just drink and converse with patrons. With any luck this blonde was part of a yakuza institution. The Kumicho of the Kooen-kai would be welcomed with open arms and opened thighs in that event, and maybe without the need to flash a single yen to get between the latter's creamy embrace.

Morishita was dumped into the hallway to shamble off and contemplate the rest of his week, the salaryman crawling past the blonde woman's high-heeled boots cradling his hand before scratching up the wall to stand and totter out into the hive of gambling. None of the punters would pay mind to the bloodied man stumbling through them-none of them saw much that was far from the dice and the cards and the wheel. The blonde woman didn't bat an eyelash at Morishita's shaken composure either, no doubt money and the dreams it would make come true filling her gaze and thoughts like any other yearning sheep.

To his credit, or perhaps in a spell of stupidity, Ichiro's doorman didn't take liberties with his pat down of the western woman's model figure. Besides the tight clothes she had a rolled up brown paper bag with her that she unravelled and opened for Aoyama to peek inside, the gangster nodding his okay afterwards.

Ichiro mopped up the droplets of blood from his desk as the woman was allowed inside his office, Aoyama shutting the door after her. Ichiro smiled broadly. Another serf set to proposition their king and a woman this time. This was the business to be in.

"Come in, come in," Ichiro warmly greeted, putting the blood stained towel away in a drawer. "Someone wipe off the chair for the lady," he instructed as Ogami and Tashiro walked back inside. The men glanced at each other and silently decided between them, the younger Tashiro moving to obey, and older Ogami returning to his mah-jong. "Disgusting person, our last client," Ichiro explained as the blonde woman sat down somewhat unenthusiastically on the now sweat-free chair in front of the gangster's desk. "Sweats like a man on death row."

There were smirks all around the room, Ichiro's the biggest.

"You have business?" Ichiro asked.

"Mr. Ichiro Inamine?" the woman said.

Ichiro inclined his head faintly. "You've found me."

"Then I have something for you." The woman's Japanese was surprisingly fluent. She must have been a hostess for a long time.

The blonde reached into her paper bag on her lap, causing anyone that was paying attention to the exchange to tense slightly-everyone but Ichiro; he had seen her frisk. The woman took out a bundle of notes and placed them on the desk. And then another. She had everyone's attention now.

"A settlement?" Ichiro queried, watching the growing pile of bills. He didn't remember any foreigners of her like in his ledger. The westerner must be an intermediary. Damn, that meant she probably wasn't a hostess girl. "For whose account?"

"Yours," the blonde woman said with a sudden smile. A cold smile. A smile not unlike the smile Ichiro gave his prey.

When next her hand emerged from the bag there was no wad of currency in her grasp. It was a lump of metal. Black, with a long barrel.

She moved so fast. Her arm, her finger. The silenced pistol fired a volley around the room before anyone even knew it was a pistol, bullets flying past Ichiro every which way, finding the dumbfounded men. It was all contained in a single killer moment.

Ichiro sat at his desk still, stunned, frozen, shocked and amazed that he was suddenly looking at corpses, surrounded by quiet death. Ogami, Tashiro, Yamada, Maeda, Ito, Tsuchiya-his underlings, how could they be dead? But dead they were, slumped over strewn mah-jong tiles and against blood-splattered surveillance screens.

It took a further second before Ichiro realised he'd been caught in the chest. He panted uncontrollably as he looked down at the blood spreading on his shirt. It didn't hurt. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything below the neck. He panted harder, knowing that couldn't be good. The yakuza strained to lift his head again, it lolling back against his chair as he looked at his assailant. The blonde was on her feet, her smoking gun pointed at him.

"Like a man on death row," the woman spoke.

Ichiro wanted to say something. Lots of things ran through his head. Who was this woman? Why was she doing this? Was she with the Yamaguchi-gumi? Was it another Sumiyoshi-kai clan? Was it the Russians? What would happen to the Kooen-kai? His business? His loans? The gambling den? The pachinko parlour? What about all his plans, all he had left to do today and tomorrow and next week?

A million thoughts; a lifetime in a moment. Ichiro wasn't ready. He wanted to rage. He wanted to cry. He wanted to reach that drawer with his gun inside.

Then the moment passed. The woman pulled the trigger.

* * *

Mireille watched Ichiro Inamine's head slump to one side and something silver and slender slip from his drooping hand onto the floor-a weapon, maybe-his wide eyes staring out. But his eyes didn't see her anymore. Nobody in the room did. The assassin was alone, the kind of alone an assassin rendered like no other.

It wouldn't be for long. Ichiro Inamine was a notorious loan shark, well-known as a sympathetic ear capable of timely generosity when the repomen were scratching at your door and the banks wouldn't let you through theirs-and a hundred times more ruthless than those banks when the day arrived to settle up. Despite the obvious foolishness of submitting to the racket, there would be legitimate clients coming through the office door possibly at any second, and escorted by at least one Kooen-kai member. There were even higher odds of more of the yakuza to come calling to their boss for whatever reason. Whichever case, new faces; more witnesses, maybe with more guns; would upset Mireille's extraction. There was one exit from the backroom office; one door, one hallway; being pinned down here would be untidy.

Following a quick check over her shoulder to see that the closed door belonging to that solitary way out was still closed, Mireille skirted around Inamine's desk, heeding where the blood had soaked into the carpeting, heading for the security camera screens at the back of the room. The blonde woman spared a split second to glance at the black and white displays to place the cameras in the rooms outside and also to ensure that no one was making a beeline for the office, before she nudged a gangster with a hole in his right temple from his seat to get at the security system's recorder. As the man toppled to the floor like the dead weight he was, Mireille ejected the disc that had recorded everything in the gambling hall and pachinko parlour today with a push of her silenced Walther P99's barrel.

Carefully, the Corsican took the disc from its tray between her thumb and forefinger. In the next moment she broke the disc in half. All of a sudden it was as if Noir had never walked into the Kooen-kai building-but for the bodies, the calling card of any capable killer. A good assassin neither required nor craved any other hallmark.

Two bullets in the system's internals later Mireille was back at the desk, recovering the bundles of money she had brought with her on the assignment. They were real, part of Mireille's own funds withdrawn from one of her accounts, and had been necessary for the misdirection; for beating the inevitable body search and to wean the attention off her to orchestrate an opening for the gun. It was a minor amount to a contract killer of the Corsican's long and prominent career, but she took the extra seconds to gather it up into the paper bag again. There was more small cash packets stacked on the desk among pieces of nut shells, and no doubt much better spoils that could be rooted out in the drawers or in a safe somewhere, a sum greater than what the blonde had carried in; plunder from the yakuza's extortion that now could be said was as much hers as it had been theirs. It didn't interest Mireille. Greed wasn't in her, and was a trait that would give anybody, least of all an assassin, a bad ending. She retrieved her own money because it was hers, no other reason. The woman had earned it, it belonged to her, and the thought of leaving it behind wasn't a thought at all-it was simply unthinkable. Perhaps it was an inbred instinct to leave as little trace of herself as possible at a scene of her work. Or maybe it was because it was a slice, even though tiny, of her retirement fund for that make-believe day sometime in the far-flung future that every assassin possessed for when they holstered their weapon for good. Or it could be that after abandoning so much at her home in Corsica as a child, Mireille was attached to that which was hers now as an adult.

Or maybe Mireille just didn't take the value of money for granted. A killer for hire knew better than most what it could buy.

Mireille added the halves of the security recording to the bag, and picking the latter up in her free hand, nipped quietly to the door. It had a peephole, providing a fisheye's view of the man that had frisked her standing at watch in the otherwise empty hall. She could likely slip out swiftly enough armed with nothing more than a smile and a sway without him noticing the bodies of his colleagues in the office behind her, but it was a further risk that she had no motivation to take. Besides, the guard had seen her face and could identify her as the probable shooter-the very instant he had laid eyes on Mireille the man had been damned. He belonged with the bodies.

Mireille thumped her fist against the office door, still spying through the peephole to catch the guard's reaction. It took a few bangs, the yakuza likely used to overlooking the odd strangled cry and loud thud in a backroom such as this, but Mireille spotted when he eventually took notice and decided to check on his boss and gang.

The guard knocked to begin with, asking a little timidly through the door whether everything was fine, no doubt anxious about the angry reprisal if his interruption wasn't looked upon favourably by the man in charge. It took no answer and a few more seconds appearing nervous before the guard decided he better poke his head in and take a look.

The door opened softly and slowly, a respectful crack, and without a word uttered by the humble gangster-not even when Mireille shot him in the head.

Mireille opened the door the rest of the way and stepped over the body lying over the threshold, leaving the door swinging. She shoved her pistol back in the paper bag as she walked down the corridor and eventually into the raucous, muggy atmosphere of the yakuza gambling den. The assassin was out clean. No one would pick her out among the dozens of other faces, even if her face was white. No one cared to. There were degenerates in every casino, but in an underground casino the degenerates were ninety percent of the patrons; they were the only sort that would take the trouble to find such a place, after all, when commonplace pachinko no longer satisfied. Mireille didn't need to worry about onlookers when there was dice rolling and cards on the table and chips on the line.

Mireille worked her way through the crowd to the other side of the room, passing through another hallway and more Kooen-kai lookouts. But to them the blonde was just another gambler seeking something more thrilling and rewarding than pachinko in the front of the building. In the paper bag was her winnings or a donation from Inamine the money lender. No assassin here.

The constant clamour of dropping ball-bearings was the herald of any pachinko parlour, and Mireille heard the din long before she walked into the Kooen-kai front. Pachinko was a strange game, native to Japan and almost exclusive to its shores as far as Mireille knew, loosely resembling an upright pinball machine but without the means to control the ball beyond firing it into the play area. The crux of the game was hoping the balls fell in favourable spots to generate profit-profit being more balls to play with. It was similar to a slot machine but with more flash, and with about the same odds of winning-that was to say, low odds. Despite how it sounded, it wasn't regarded as a gambling device in this country, despite for all intents and purposes being one. Balls could be traded for tokens at the cashier, and those tokens taken to an 'unaffiliated' nondescript kiosk outside the parlour to be exchanged again for prizes or for what most people wanted from their pachinko playtime-hard currency. Gambling was illegal in Japan, yet apparently only to a degree if you were willing to jump through certain hoops.

Everyone was just kidding themselves. As Mireille entered the parlour, the players looked the same as those in the back. They sat on stools at their machines, their eyes glued to the gaudy twinkling lights and chirping cartoon mascots, mechanically pushing ball after ball into the slot, oblivious to anything else. The room was awash with the same smoke and sleaze as in the 'real' gambling hall Mireille had just come from; at least there it had the decency to be what it truly was instead of this farce. The players here in the parlour still cried out, still bet their last coin, and were still desperate for a win. They were fooling themselves if they thought themselves better than the punters playing behind the back wall.

Mireille quickly found Kirika right where she had left the girl, standing at the rear of the parlour with the other children dragged here and soon abandoned by addicted parents and relatives. The kids had designated the back wall dumping ground as theirs, and took to the situation as kids did best-by making their own fun no matter the place or circumstance. Some, the veterans of the pachinko parlour, played card games or fiddled with toys they had wisely brought along, while the rest, with nothing else on hand, looked to the loose pachinko balls gathered from the floor for entertainment. Children were resilient, adaptable. They could endure almost anything.

Kirika stood with the other youngsters, and while some were close to her age, it was distinct that she was not a part of them. She didn't play. She didn't take to the situation. In this respect, Kirika did not-could not-adapt. That was the cost when you endured too much, too soon-you weren't a kid any longer. Mireille remembered that moment herself, in Corsica, gazing at had once been her home with her uncle stealing her away into the night, with memory of her smiling, loving family lying on the floor in their own blood.

The blonde assassin didn't need to say anything. At the sight of her Kirika walked over to her, and the pair began squeezing through the gauntlet of twinkling and tweeting pachinko machines and the brainwashed players chained to their flash towards the exit. Kirika didn't ask if the job had been a success. Maybe there was no doubt in the girl's mind. Maybe her faith in Mireille was unflinching. Maybe Kirika already knew. Mireille had been by herself facing Inamine and his goons, yet she hadn't felt it had been a solo affair. The yakuza office had been in a windowless room in the back of the building but nevertheless Noir had seemed whole.

Could it be...? Kirika had proven before that she was ready to disobey and follow the blonde whenever some enigmatic motivation was pricked, and moreover *wherever* the woman went however impractical or improbable. Had Kirika been there in the midst of the gamblers? Loitering in the shadows of the rear hallways? Listening at a vent connected to the loan shark's office? It seemed unreal, impossible that Mireille could not have noticed... but the woman had witnessed her young partner perform actions and manoeuvres no one else would have fathomed on many occasions; Kirika shaped the impossible into the possible, made it her specialty.

Or perhaps Mireille was indulging in risky romanticism, believing in a safeguard that wasn't really there. Some people believed in a guardian angel that watched over them-she wasn't one of those people. But... if Mireille had been... there could be worse guardian angels than this girl at her side.

On impulse Mireille glanced over her shoulder at Kirika on her tail, her fellow assassin's doe-eye expression its typical cloud, revealing nothing of what was really beyond those eyes; angel or demon, teenager or assassin. Yet whatever it was that should define her, Mireille wanted Kirika near.

Noir walked out into the street and the sunlight, their deed done. It wouldn't be the end of the Kooen-kai; there was always an eager someone on the food chain to replace a higher-up that had fallen. Inamine's business would survive him. Organised crime all over the world was bred the same; the same sort of vermin regardless of how vaunted their history, values, or rise to prominence. Kill a soldier and the pack would breed another, kill a boss and the pack would quiver-then grow a new head. You had to kill them all, every last one above a soldier with a shred of authority or influence, and even then some of the ambitious soldiers had to be put down as well if you wanted to ensure a syndicate burned. People forgot that, tending to arrange hits on one or two leaders or the big boss instead of the whole command structure-the mistake reflected in their contracts.

Mireille doubted Soldats was making the same oversight here, however. They likely didn't want the yakuza clan in the ground but to continue to thrive sans a problematic individual, and perhaps to help maintain the Sumiyoshi-kai collective as a worthy counter to the Yamaguchi-gumi. Whatever the politicking, Ichiro Inamine wasn't the first gangster Noir had murdered in Yokohama this week, nor would he be the last in this city or the others in Kanto to be claimed by the black path.

Jacques had emailed more briefs, more intel-which meant Breffort, *Soldats*, had. There had been many names on those briefs; every one of them linked in some fashion to Japan's yakuza groups. The briefings had been detailed, going into the reasons behind why every person on the list had to be eliminated to move closer to the destruction of Altena's last holdouts in Ishinomori Tower. The reasons had been... reasonable. The women and men were collaborators, or thinking of turning to the Soldats rebellion whether wittingly or unwittingly. Noir's 'contribution' was denying the priestesses allies; powerful allies if the entire Sumiyoshi-kai or Yamaguchi-gumi were corrupted. So was alleged. Reasonable reasons, pointed out in stark, straightforward language-Breffort's doing. He probably thought he was making Mireille's life easier, removing the need to check the facts and intelligence on each assignment before undertaking it.

She checked them anyway.

Mireille still didn't trust Breffort or Soldats, old incarnation or new. Like with any other client, the Corsican meticulously attempted to authenticate every scrap of information provided for each job, always half-expecting a betrayal somewhere-especially now, with Soldats as that client. It wasn't Breffort's life on the line. But most of all Mireille didn't want her grief, her anger, to be used for other goals. Soldats could feed her any sort of rubbish and point to a man, saying he had to die for her and her partner's revenge. Mireille would not blindly shoot. She was not a tool of Soldats, nor was Kirika. If Breffort thought of making the same error Altena had he would find it as fatal as the priestess. Naturally a little faith had to be taken with any client or source, as not everything was verifiable to everyone-what need would there be for an intelligence man of Jacques' or Breffort's ilk if it was? But they were only as good as their word, only as useful for as long as their information was trustworthy. If their intel was honest, then the providers themselves could be as bent as a hairpin and still have success in the trade. Then again, this was Soldats and not some petty street corner snitch. Breffort's word had been trustworthy today. Mireille would believe in tomorrow's with the necessary grain of salt.

Mireille and Kirika past by the pachinko parlour's kiosk, its counter and shelves replete with 'unofficial' rewards for the establishment's dedicated dupes. On a bench not a metre distant from the prizes a shattered man in a dishevelled suit sat hunched, his bloodied hand wrapped in his loosed necktie, and ignored by every other passerby. Inamine's last client. The Corsican knew his face, but he did not know hers-he only knew her taste in leather footwear. His torture had saved his life from Noir. His slate was not wiped clean with the yakuza boss's demise however; good book-keeping outlasted even death. There were no shortcuts in life, just lives cut short in that pursuit.

"Lunch first," Mireille decided with a smile, in no rush to return to the safehouse. She gestured slightly impishly with her paper bag at Kirika. "My treat."

Kirika nodded, as if it wasn't always the blonde's treat. She watched the man too, her head turning with him as they walked on.

A minute later, on another street in front of another building, one half of the broken security disc was in Mireille's palm as she wandered by a trashcan. Then on a different street beside a different bin, the second half in loose fingers. Two casual moments in a crowd of countless. Two lions among the sheep.

* * *

Kirika came in after Mireille, her eyes reflexively scanning the living room and its angles; those corners, those blindspots where someone could be lying in wait. The house was their place of safety, their sanctuary from the outside while piercing the darkness in this land, but Kirika couldn't inhibit herself from checking whenever she crossed the front door's threshold. The girl knew these walls, knew the rooms and the furniture, their scent and feel, yet she treated it like any other safehouse that wasn't home in Paris. Because it wasn't home in Paris, though the Yuumura household had been a home of a kind once. This place of memories slept now, the ghosts put to rest, but still there was no peace here. Maybe the problem lied with her. Maybe there was no respite, no reprieve from her instincts and senses, because there was none to be had in Kirika.

['Sanctuary'? 'Home'? They are simply places like any other. Walls no more impenetrable, no more sacred, than those you have breached yourself while sinning. Did you respect the sinners' sanctuaries? Did they really possess peace...?]

Altena's voice also wouldn't see her relax... because it spoke compelling truth. Those corners needed to be checked, her guard needed to stay up. It was moments that killed. A brief lapse, a small slip; that was all it took-the young assassin had used such herself to end people who believed themselves safe and secure in familiarity. Mireille's Parisian apartment hadn't kept the darkness at its doorstep forever either; a safehouse was only safe for as long as you made it so.

Inside, Mireille let go of a breath as if she had been holding it a long time, and with detectible weariness stooped to unzip her boots. She left them in the genkan and shrugged off her coat, the garment sliding lazily from her shoulders and dropped atop a cabinet in the living room. The blonde woman sighed again as she walked barefoot further into the house, stretching her arms above her head for a second, before sitting cross-legged at the table in the middle of the room, focused on her laptop lying there. With one hand Mireille opened the laptop while the other rested her gun next to it, the weapon placed aside with a clunk against the table; one tool of the trade exchanged for another.

Mireille had her routine. Kirika had hers too.

The darkhaired teenager drifted through the living room to the kitchen, and then up the stairs quietly like a gentle breeze. Down the hall she wandered, touring from room to room seemingly without aim. There wasn't anything Kirika wanted upstairs; in the bathroom or in any of the bedrooms. She had everything she needed-her Beretta M1934 in her parka's pocket, her gun never put aside since arriving. The rooms were empty save for her; no stranger under a bed, no figure in a wardrobe. The safehouse was still safe-until the next time.

Her patrol of the house's interior complete, Kirika walked back downstairs and into the living room. Mireille had her back to her, the woman wholly immersed in her computer's screen by now. She leaned towards it, staring with all the intensity the people had possessed at the pachinko parlour for their game machines while waiting for the balls to drop, gauging how and where they would. Mireille was updating their Soldats contact on Noir's success with their latest assignment. Then there would be another assignment. There was always another assignment. By dusk another person would be marked, and before tomorrow's dawn another person would be dead. Kirika and Mireille were players in a game where there were no winners, just all the risk. Just the dead and the soon to be. The balls fell however they wanted, but every one of them was destined for the dark hole at the bottom sooner or later-some sooner than others.

It was a game Kirika was born to play. This routine, in spite of its weight on her, in spite of what it called on her to do, was one she knew. Maybe it was the only routine the girl had ever really understood. This was the life Kirika existed for. Her body was accustomed to the killing, her mind well-versed in the many methods, whatever her heart and soul cried to the contrary. There was fulfilment in following your purpose, in doing what you were built for. Kirika's heart may not have been committed to it, but the rest of her was a well-oiled machine on well-worn tracks. There was comfort to be found, regardless of how uneasy the notion made her feel in every other way. It was like old times with Mireille, just the two of them facing the world and their past, bargaining contracts for information on Soldats. The goal had changed; the target too; but the feeling was the same. Kirika and her partner, Noir, working together as one.

Was it better than Paris? Better than the afterwards, when there had been no more contracts, no more information to gather, no more lives to take? When the pilgrimage to the past had ended, with just the present to look to? Perhaps it hadn't really ended. Here Kirika and Mireille were now, still in the past, still with lives to take. Maybe Paris, the peace, had been a mirage. Or maybe there was never going to be an ending. Maybe it ended when they did, when it was their lives that were taken. Maybe this feeling of solace, of acquiesce to who they were and what they did, was as idyllic as it got. The thought saddened Kirika, but at least she wouldn't be alone in the darkness.

Kirika rounded the kotatsu coffee table, keystrokes substituting for her silent footsteps, permeating the quiet. The girl watched Mireille; watched her long fingers gliding over the laptop's keyboard; watched the light of the screen reflecting in her steely blue gaze. Kirika wanted this, however. What she and Mireille were doing, allying with Soldats, bringing down the last of Altena's flock-Kirika wanted it. The darkhaired girl didn't really grasp the intimacy of revenge, didn't perceive vengeance as her experienced partner did-when Kirika looked in Mireille's eyes she saw heat within them, a fire that burned in only the woman's vision; an... an *anger*. But anger wasn't in Kirika. There was much that wasn't in Kirika. The young girl didn't get angry. Sad, frustrated, but anger, rage and all of its intricacies wasn't part of her. Maybe... maybe it was still somewhere inside, somewhere else, sealed away with everything else missing, taken by that other her. Maybe it was part of a different her.

Vengeance drove Mireille, but not Kirika. Kirika understood the *idea* of it though, of what shouldn't be forgiven. Yet the young assassin wasn't here only because retribution was Mireille's path. Mireille's revenge wasn't Kirika's. What Kirika wanted was for *them* to know it wasn't right. She wanted Soldats, the priestesses-whoever they really were-to *know* that what they had done to her and Mireille wasn't something that could be forgotten. She wanted those responsible to realise there were consequences, that people were hurt by what they had deliberately chosen to do. Kirika wanted them to know that she wasn't going to run and hide from anything that had happened to her, that she wasn't afraid to face the guilty and tell them these things. To think of it invigorated Kirika; made her palms sweat, made her restless. She may not have had the fire Mireille did inside, but she had the same drive.

Kirika slid open the shoji screen door that led onto a rear veranda from the living room, continuing her check of the property. There was a pair of slippers lying on the wooden beams. Hers? She couldn't remember, but they fit, and if they weren't before they were hers now. Kirika wore them, as was her developing habit for when she came out here, and shuffled the short distance across the veranda, which opened into a secluded back garden. It was fenced off, high enough to keep it private, and had a small speck of lawn and some soil beds in the corners with plants growing quietly, gently swaying in the wind. To her recollection the garden had never been tended, yet somehow it seemed to look after itself. It was as if it understood its role; that it was aware it was abandoned like the rest of the house, that it wasn't part of a home but that it still had to play the part-that its purpose was to look like it had one.

The grass sank beneath Kirika's feet as she walked into the centre of the backyard. Her head panned from one half of the garden to the other, studying the small enclosure. There was nowhere someone could hide without being immediately spotted, but Kirika had to be sure the garden was still quiet, still abandoned, still never knowing a visitor except for her. The teenager glanced over the thick grass, seeing no other imprints aside from her own footfalls. She looked at the top of the high fence, scanning over its perimeter, seeing nothing had changed in the tightly laced wood from the last time she'd looked. The garden was still private. Still lonely.

There was nothing left to inspect, the house confirmed as Kirika and Mireille's still, but the Japanese youth stood in the grass a while longer. She looked up at the sky, watched it slowly bleed into pinks and reds. Kirika didn't think of blood or killing, just of the colours, the way they blended into one another like those on a painting. It was a small vision of beauty in an otherwise ugly world. But there was beauty nonetheless if you knew where and when to look. In those moments it was right to stare.

"Is someone there?"

It was Kirika's own query, reflected back at her. The assassin's hand immediately closed around her pistol in her parka's pocket as her head turned in the direction of the disturbance-a female voice, *not* Mireille's. It came from somewhere behind the veil of the fence, on the right side.

For a few seconds Kirika didn't know how she should react. The curious speaker probably wasn't dangerous; a murderer didn't usually announce themselves like this; yet Kirika wasn't spared anxiety. In the teenager's life she had one person she talked to. One person that *was* her life. Her *whole* life. In Kirika's world there was only herself and Mireille; everyone else outside of that world were nameless, faceless figures, distant beings. Sometimes they got a name and a face, but only when a figure became a target, when the being was revealed to be dark travellers like Noir. Kirika didn't talk to other people. Other people didn't talk to Kirika. And if they did, they knew to stop soon after. Strangers were just that to her-*strange*. And now there was one speaking to her, speaking to her at the border of the safehouse, what was meant to be a refuge from the outside.

Maybe she *shouldn't* react. Kirika could sneak away back inside and pretend that she was never in the garden. She could literally leave without a sound. As soon as she thought of that it became the choice Kirika wanted to make.

"Hello? Who's there?"

Kirika had retreated no more than a footstep on the soft grass when the woman called out again, with more conviction, more curiosity, as if she had heard. Hearing her a second time Kirika recognised the friendly tone of the Yuumura household's middle-aged neighbour. She'd first met her when Mireille had, the day after they had arrived in Kawasaki and moved back into the Soldats house. Kirika couldn't remember the woman before then; the girl couldn't remember having neighbours at all when the safehouse had been her home. Kirika had felt totally isolated and alone then, an exclusion from the rest of the world everyone else had seemed to live in.

"Uhh..." Kirika breathed. She was certainly being noticed now.

"Is that you, dear?"

She had to say something. Kirika was still tempted to slink off nevertheless.

"Hello," the darkhaired girl eventually went with. It was all she could think of.

"I *thought* I'd heard someone!" the woman gleefully remarked, sounding pleased to have been right. There was footsteps; crunches on hard dry dirt; and when the woman spoke again her voice was closer, all but up against the fence. "I hadn't seen you for so long, I thought you and your friend might have gone back home."

"Mm-mm," Kirika mumbled in the negative. She stared at the fence, picturing behind it the older woman as she had seen her before-round and stocky, in coveralls and wearing thick gardening gloves and with a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, chin-length black curls squashed out.

"You're staying longer then? I remember your friend mentioning you were here on holiday for only a short time."

"She... We... had to stay longer," Kirika laboured for explanation, scared that in her clumsiness with speaking to others she could accidently reveal too much. Mireille would get angry if she said the wrong thing.

"Oh? You had to?" The young assassin could hear the smile in the neighbour's voice. "Did you find the sightseeing that irresistible?"

A joke. It took Kirika a moment to realise that; a long, drawn out moment that had the girl struck mute and the silence between her and the woman grow to uncomfortable proportions.

"Dear?"

"Business," Kirika meekly blurted. "We had to stay for business."

"Ahhh... a working holiday is it then," the neighbour seemed to ponder. "I knew your friend was the business sort when I saw her. The foreigners that visit normally are."

"Mm," Kirika found herself agreeing, though not altogether understanding.

"Well, tell her I hope she is liking Kawasaki. And I hope you are too. I should let you go now; it's getting dark and I don't want to keep you from your holiday! I'd talk your ear off if you let me! These hydrangeas won't water themselves!"

"Mm," Kirika murmured awkwardly at the end of the spiel. She quickly returned to the veranda, the woman humming softly to herself behind the girl as she went back to her gardening. In the back of Kirika's mind another voice joined in, whispering in the void. The voice of another older woman she recognised, but the true speaker was someone Kirika's own age. What the girl said was too low to make out however, so low Kirika wondered if she was meant to hear it. The muttering mingled with the singing, almost one and the same.

Kirika shut the shoji screen door after her, glad to be back indoors, glad to be away from all the voices. Her other self fell silent when the neighbour was no longer within earshot, plunging back into whatever dark place she resided.

Mireille looked up at her, the blonde still at her laptop. "We have another."

Standing in the living room Kirika nodded, almost with relief.

This was what she knew.

* * *

The nights were different here to those of Paris. The City of Light was sallow twilight and shadows, old iron streetlamps dashing mystique across older stone buildings. There was intrigue down every cobblestone avenue, atmosphere on every historic corner. Yokohama was also a city of lights, but of neon, more literally of colour and brightness. The nights here, like in most of Japan's major cities, were painted with reds and greens and blues, the colours shimmering and blending on the rain-slick pavement and roadways like oil on a dark canvas; an impressionist corruption, a Monet for the modern age. The streets were full despite the hour and the wet weather, the alleys leading to more people and more neon, the corners home to another flashy corporate tower. There was no mystery, steel instead of stone, the soul of the city sapped for progress. But there were still shadows if you knew where to look.

Mireille favoured her home city above any other. Perhaps it was the same for everybody. Paris was her favourite hunting ground, in her mind the birthplace of her art, its particular charm unmatched by anyplace else in the world. If she could thrive on Parisian streets, she could thrive on any no matter the language of the signs or design of the buildings. It was with confidence the Corsican walked Yokohama, deep into its nightlife, where arrays of clubs and bars faced one another down narrow lanes.

A light drizzle fell, a pitter-patter on the clear plastic of Mireille's umbrella over her head. She wasn't dressed for the turn in the weather, her violet evening gown with its provocative slit and low back not something one would chose to venture out into the rain wearing. She wore a cream wrap around her bare arms and shoulders to fend off the chill in the air, and her stiletto heels kept her feet out of the puddles. Mireille was dressed for the neon night, dressed to impress, dressed to distract-dressed to kill. Tonight any man would die to meet her. Tonight a particular man would die.

Kirika walked with Mireille, her escort. Or maybe Mireille was hers. Kirika wore a navy dress, pleated and flowing. Cute. The girl looked her age. Mireille had mulled over brushing a little powder on her cheeks and maybe applying a little colour on her lips and around her eyes, but... no. Tonight was not the night for it. Cosmetics would have added a couple of years, but makeup was an indulgence, something fun to share with Kirika on a day or night where the only reason was for *her*. Another day, another night, when the black path wasn't so black.

Mireille was doing her best to hold the umbrella over herself and Kirika, but the woman doubted the girl would mind should the rain soak her. The humming neon city around her didn't seem to strike a nerve in Kirika, suggesting her surroundings could be as blank as her stare was for as much impact they had. The teenager's mind worked differently, her eyes saw different, maybe picked up those shadows more readily than others did, even Mireille. There wasn't any mystique for Kirika. There was just people and concrete structures, strangers and shapes, each city the same as those before it. Every one was Kirika's hunting ground, all equal in the eyes of the best. It rubbed Mireille the wrong way despite the girl's unmistakable talent, taking something away from the art of murder and its allure. But the woman supposed survival, being good at the job, was what was really important. She could not argue with Kirika's artistry in that.

The signs for the nightclubs and bars started to change the further Noir walked, with pictures of simpering women slicked with heavy blush and eyeshadow taking their place, illuminated in shades of pink neon. Mireille and Kirika were almost there. They passed more hostess bars and clubs, where woman pretended to be in love with the patrons-for as long as they kept ordering the expensive liquors. The bigger the tab the bigger the love. Love always had its price, except here it was more well-defined. There wasn't prostitution-at least officially-nor was it the same as a stripclub, it was something... very Japanese, like some offshoot of the geisha culture of old. Mireille could understand the attraction of company of course, but the practice was still regarded as peculiar to her.

Noir stopped at a club where the lights were blue instead of pink and the gaudy signs written in fancy flowing English cursive. It wasn't women's time that was sold at 'The Boudoir'. Company for hire was an equal opportunity business. It was lonely female hearts with a taste for the masculine that could find succour here, conditional though it still was. The headshots outside were of too pretty men-boys really-hair puffed and spiked into coiffures fit for fantasy. Perhaps in any other locale, any other country, it might have been comical. But a host club was as booming an enterprise as its hostess counterpart. And with every booming business with a touch of sin, criminal groups had their dirty fingers all over it.

Lee-Sung Park was this club's seedy mogul. He had a small series of host and hostess clubs throughout Yokohama, nothing too extravagant, but he lived a charmed life with what they allegedly pulled in for the Kiei-kai and its leader. It was more than likely Park's bottom line was well-padded from dalliances turning his hostess clubs into covert brothels. Sex was always where the real money was when flesh was peddled.

Lee-Sung Park's charmed life could have continued indefinitely... if he wasn't going to turn his trade to filling Ishinomori coffers instead of the Sumiyoshi-kai's. His charmed life apparently wasn't charmed enough for him-he wanted something more. More stability, more money, more influence, more power-whatever it was it didn't matter to Soldats. Soldats spies were in every shadow, and seemingly in every yakuza clan in every city in Japan, and had told of the man and his clubs, and of his desire for more-and that desire had been sufficient for them. Mireille could map Soldats' thoughts, even if the organisation was reticent to do so. Park was a leader and people could and would follow his desire, in particular other Koreans entrenched in other yakuza groups. His siding with Ishinomori might make the rebels an attractive option for his expatriate countrymen potentially still ostracised by some of the pure-blooded yakuza cliques or for wholesale criminal groups composed primarily of Korean outsiders. Before Lee-Sung Park could rise up he would be cut down.

Getting to Park was easy. Getting to him in such a way that he would surely catch a bullet was not. Park was savvy in more than just the love market, surrounding himself with bodyguards, men to bleed in his stead. He could be gotten to at his home, in his car, during his daily routine if Noir pushed hard enough-but why use force when a gentle touch would suffice? Anybody could kill, but the assassin made it an art. No, there was a time and place Park would be alone. He had more than a general liking for the host business.

Mireille past the poster boards and placards and walked up the steps to the Boudoir. The windows were veiled by navy velvet curtains, though the front door was held wide open, inviting passersby into the dark and silky fantasyland. A doorman slouched outside watching the street, dressed in a black suit. Kiei-kai, no doubt. His eyes shifted to watch Mireille and Kirika as the pair approached, sizing them up, particularly where the Corsican's dress dipped at her chest. He would be no problem.

Mireille walked by the gangster with more than a second look shot after her; however the man's look changed when he finally saw Kirika.

"Stop. You. How old?"

Mireille had stopped herself at the sound of the yakuza's voice and turned halfway back around. "Old enough," the blonde interceded.

The doorman glanced at her, a little taken aback by Mireille's intrusion, and then again at Kirika. For a moment Mireille thought she might have to ease whatever conscious he had with the tried and true monetary balm-however the moment past. The gangster jerked his head in the direction of the door, his blessing given. He was probably accustomed to seeing high-school aged petitioners at his doorstep, searching for an 'easy' part-time job-there were likely underage boys already working behind him inside. Whatever brought in the most money, and typically being an illegal worker meant your wage was up for brutal negotiation.

There was no profit in turning away a customer either, underage or otherwise, and Mireille and Kirika were treated as valued ones upon entering. A man dressed as an upmarket waiter greeted them inside, his black bowtie crisp and his black waistcoat buttoned tight. He bowed and scraped, taking Mireille's umbrella with one hand and ushering them further inside with the other, where another server escorted them the rest of the way into the lounge proper.

Mireille could see what the Boudoir was trying to achieve. On the other side of the navy curtains was furniture torn out of a parody of an eighteenth century French royal court; chaise longues and lacquer-veneered couches, their silken upholstery pricked with fine gold thread. But the gilding was faded and fraying, the silk worn from too many different bottoms and stained from too many spilt drinks, the lacquer peeling from too many different hands. The lights were turned down low, that clichéd intimate setting, the perpetual dusk preferred for hushed whispers and private moments. The gloom hid a multitude-what you were paying for every drink; yours and your company's; and the 'perfect' face across from yours, not so perfect in harsher light. The atmosphere spoke of opulence and class, of personal fantasy come to life... but the fantasy ran deeper, the trickery in believing in it to begin with. Reality hadn't been left outside; it was as raw here as anywhere else. The realisation came later when you saw your bill and when the men who had whispered sweet nothings in your ear couldn't remember your name.

But there were some that knew the fantasy for what it was and let themselves be lied to. There were more than a few women occupying spots on the tatty furnishings; twenty-somethings with the cash to burn swooning beside their favourite rented beau, along with other women that by appearances were not as well off. Mireille didn't exactly fit in-a little too well dressed, a little too self-confident... a little too blonde. You sold the role you had. She would be remembered, there was no helping it, but only for reasons she orchestrated.

Mireille split from Kirika, allowing herself to be led by one server while another approached the younger girl. Mireille pretended they weren't together, that they had simply come to the Boudoir at the same time; however the blonde woman couldn't stop herself from a surreptitious glance back at her partner, left adrift in an environment not unlike an uncharted ocean to the girl's mind. The other waiter talked to Kirika briefly, before guiding her to another part of the lounge, the teenager following compliantly with a lost look to her eyes. You sold the role you had, but Kirika only had one she knew. Mireille would have to work quickly.

Mireille was presented with her own couch which she made a show of availing herself of, reclining as if she were indeed a queen in a royal court and the hosts and waiters her devoted subjects. With barely a pause a pretty young man appeared, dressed in a suit casually unbuttoned along with the majority of the shirt underneath, all smiles and charm from the get go. Noir weren't the only ones with roles to uphold.

"I'm Akio. May I join you?" he asked, smoothly gesturing towards the empty space on the couch.

Mireille inclined her head equally as smoothly.

"Drink?" the host said once he'd made himself comfortable next to the blonde. It was not an invitation, not really.

Mireille looked to the waiter that still lingered, no doubt precisely for this reason. "I want the very best you have." She spoke leisurely, confidently-and produced a small clump of folded bills to brandish meaningfully. It wasn't too much in truth, but for this place it was an overindulgence that would get attention-the right attention, the kind she was looking for.

Akio's face lit up. He was probably calculating his cut. "Certainly!" He looked to the server, the host's facade disappearing for a moment as he snapped his head sharply at him, urging the server to get a move on. When Mireille was in his sights again his charm oozed back, as if she could not notice the lapse while addressing the 'help'. She smiled and nodded slightly, as if grateful and approving, then slipped the money away, it no longer needed. Payment came at the conclusion of the evening. Noir wouldn't be the ones paying tonight however.

"A woman with taste..."

It was a few minutes of smalltalk with Akio later that Mireille turned her head towards a newcomer, already expecting him. He had personally seen her advertising her earning potential or the waiter had blabbed on his path to the bar; in any case word had spread quickly from the right mouths to the right ears.

"...And beauty as well," Lee-Sung Park finished, one corner of his mouth turning up just a little as he fully soaked in the picture of Mireille. His eyes moved to Akio, who shrunk under the tall man's stare. Wordlessly Akio slid off the couch cushions and slinked away into the lounge's twilight for customers on his level, proverbial tail between his legs. There had been fright in the host's eyes. No one liked dealing with their boss, especially when he was a known gangster.

Park filled Akio's seat, his eyes always on Mireille. The Korean had a head for the host business in more ways than one. He was handsome, no question, with tanned skin and enough dark stubble on his face to accentuate all the right angles. He kept his hair somewhat long, black locks swept back over his head and down the nape of his neck. Park had the looks to curry the favour of the wealthiest of female clients and the most attractive. In his mind Mireille was probably both. He was here to play host himself, likely on the surface for the business's sake but more than likely for his own personal pleasure. Soldats' briefing had been detailed.

"A new face," Park said in a smoky voice, "one I'm not likely to forget. My name is Lee-Sung Park. This is my place. Whatever you desire, I can make it yours."

Mireille's lips pursed slightly, seductively. Her eyes were deep pools. "I desire much. My name is... something you'll have to earn," she coyly replied.

Park's lopsided smile grew. "Can you at least tell me something about yourself?"

"I'm... a widow," the blonde said.

"How unfortunate for you... And fortunate for me," Park quipped.

Low chuckles were shared and champagne arrived. The assassin and her target grinned at one another. He poured and she sipped. Mireille *was* a widow. A black widow.

* * *

"So... what's your name? I'm Hiroki."

"..."

Kirika watched Mireille from across the room. It was effortless, the way the woman behaved. When she smiled it looked real; it touched her eyes, made them light up. She laughed; little laughs; music that had you wanting to hear it over and over. She leaned into the target, felt his arm, slid her hand along its length and had her fingers dance over his skin. They had just met, yet they looked like they had known each other for a long time. Like they were good friends... more than good friends. It was an ease Kirika envied. She didn't envy that it was missing in her, that she couldn't mimic it herself; be the perfect pretender for a contract, or simply have that outlet for her feelings. Kirika envied that Mireille had it in her yet that it came out for someone else... someone that wasn't Kirika.

The girl was aware it was a lie she was seeing, that there was no true emotion behind the soft-spoken words and warm caresses. However, even if it was make-believe, Kirika was witnessing Mireille as she could be. It was *in* her. Was Kirika's missing pieces holding Mireille back? When they were together, Mireille was... less than what Kirika was seeing now. Muted. More... in check. Was that the real Mireille? Was Kirika merely being fooled by the lie right now as well? Mireille wore many masks, changing them whenever she needed to. Maybe this was just another mask and not a mirror, reflecting nothing of the actual woman underneath. Maybe... But Kirika had seen underneath, had seen the good and loving person that lived there. There was affection in Mireille, affection that would make what Kirika was watching on the other side of the lounge not make-believe. Affection that she wanted to be *hers*. Kirika wanted to be the target. She wanted to be the man, Lee-Sung Park. She wanted to be the one Mireille laughed effortlessly with, the one the blonde touched freely. Kirika watched this man, watched him respond to Mireille's attention, feeding off it and returning it, the pair parallels to one another, a perfect partnership. They were perfect mirrors for each other, while Kirika was the broken one, with missing shards and odd angles, returning emptiness and distortion. Kirika was not someone who could compliment Mireille's love in this way. She couldn't give as she received, couldn't reflect the devotion that might be bestowed upon her, at least not in the manner others did. Kirika wasn't a whole person. For all her masks, Mireille *was*.

"Um... how about a drink? I can get you a drink."

Kirika turned her head to the man sitting beside her. He was young, maybe not as young as her but close, chosen to be a match for her own youth. Chosen as her parallel. She looked at him, at 'Hiroki', at his slicked up hair and exotic clothing, and saw in his face what she felt. Nothing. Emptiness. There was no connection, not even that slightest, barest rapport that normally existed between two human beings. He knew it, Kirika knew it. He still pretended, going through the motions despite the void sitting before him. Kirika could not.

"Anything you want, we have-"

"Juice," Kirika murmured, a robotic answer, a go-to response.

"Juice," Hiroki parroted, smiling, obviously grateful for the interaction, grateful for any progress to alleviate the awkward tension. "What kind?" He clicked his fingers, eager to fulfil the request.

Kirika didn't hear him, instead turned back to the one person in the room, in the world, that she did have a connection with, however fragile, however twisted, however it was. Mireille was pushing the plan forward. The laughter and touching was moving across the lounge, the blonde woman hanging on the target's arm and being led by him elsewhere... yet it was she doing the leading. There was a private room at the back where Lee-Sung Park took clients sometimes. It was away from the eyes of the lounge, away from eyes of any sort; a place where Park wouldn't want them Mireille had said. Kirika's partner hadn't gone into more detail than that, so the rest-the target's mind; his motive; the reason for the obvious vulnerability-wasn't important to know. What Kirika did know, what was important, was that it was an ideal room for someone to quietly die in.

The private room didn't have a door but a dark screen of drapery. The only way in and the only way out. Park pushed through the curtain, then turned back to hold it aside for his deadly company. Mireille smiled demurely at the gesture, disappearing under the curtain and man's arm and into his den.

The curtain fell back into place, however Kirika could still follow, hers the one pair of eyes that still saw. The curtain's folds had dropped favourably, a sliver of space left between them and the doorframe enough for the girl to witness the private hospitality of Lee-Sung Park. There was a couch; old crinkled black leather, battered from many creases from many bodies; and on it Mireille relaxed, unfurling her perfect body like a feline in full stretch. Park was there of course, taking in the view while Kirika did, smirk on his face.

In another part of her mind, through another's eyes, Kirika noticed her host Hiroki had switched his attention to someone else; an older, more normal girl that had just been seated on their couch better receptive to his chatter and personality. Kirika barely registered the rebuff, her training doing the noticing and the rest of her on the assignment. On Mireille. On Park.

Mireille's lush lips curved in delight as Park's hands roamed, following the rise of her hips and slope of her waist, travelling at their leisure upwards, candidly visiting parts of the blonde's body as if they knew them well. The man's large hands smoothed over the bare skin on Mireille's chest left exposed by her dress, then higher, tracing the graceful contours of her arched neck. Park was grinning, riveted by sight and sensation, willingly enslaved by it. Enjoying it. He knew what to do. The world was laid out before him and all he had to do was live in it; drink it in, bathe in the experience. His body reacted as it was meant to in the presence of such a beautiful woman, his touch expected. Wanted. He kept on grinning.

Hiroki didn't notice Kirika wasn't sitting beside him anymore. He didn't see her move. No one did. The girl slipped through the lounge, past other couches filled with people, weaving around waiters-and nobody saw her. That was Kirika Yuumura-the shadow in the dark, the ghost in the crowd, the person that didn't exist. The girl that didn't matter. The invisible demon in their midst. Kirika moved and the world didn't notice.

Kirika nipped behind the curtain and inside the private room, the fabric barely rippling with her passing. They didn't even see her enter. Not until she was there, beside them, an invader within their personal little paradise. Mireille's face was a new mask-shock. Or perhaps, for that one brief instant, there was no mask. The target's face showed surprise too, then quickly anger at the intrusion. Then nothing. Emptiness, a blank slate, all emotion wiped clean, a face in the lounge that was finally a mirror for Kirika's own. It was... good to look upon and to recognise something familiar. It was satisfying to see that the man had stopped his grinning.

Kirika blinked as Park sagged into the leather couch cushions. Slowly he tipped over, crumpling against an armrest. His head flopped loosely about on his shoulders. He stared at the floor in front of his face with unmoving glassy eyes. Then Kirika remembered. The distinctive hard tone of the spine breaking, dulled as it came to her ears through flesh and muscle; the sensation of the bone giving way to a superior outside pressure, bending in a manner that it couldn't, snapping when it could refuse the demand no longer. Lee-Sung Park was dead. Killed by Kirika.

Mireille's breathing permeated the room. Kirika immediately looked to her fellow assassin when the realisation of what she had done sank in. The girl's first thought was for the assignment, for the plan she had ruined. The target was dead, yes, but not by the method Noir had intended. Her mind raced through the possible consequences, much like Mireille's was probably doing at the exact same moment. They were numerous and terrible. Kirika's breathing began to quicken in time with her partner's.

Kirika sensed movement behind her and turned as Mireille's edgy gaze turned also, rushing to look towards the room's only entrance. An oblivious waiter walked inside with two long-stemmed glasses in hand and an ice bucket cradled under an arm, the neck of a new bottle of wine poking above the rim. He seemed to make a point in not looking at the couch where his boss was, his head bowed with practiced subservience. It brought him several steps into the room before he gasped-a wayward glance, whether caused by curiosity or bad luck, revealing to him that his employer wasn't having his usual fun-and wouldn't ever again.

Gunfire. Two shots in quick succession, the sound of each bullet's flight dampened by a silencer. The waiter buckled, suddenly legless, suddenly a mound of dead flesh on the floor. His load followed him, the glasses hitting the floor as the bucket with wine did, the racket of strewn ice and glass banging against metal only somewhat tempered by the carpet. Nothing broke, yet Kirika's breath stopped in the aftermath. It had been loud. There were bodies. Noir was in the open. It wouldn't take much more for everything to go fatally wrong.

Still supine, Mireille held her smoking pistol pointed at the curtain and the doorway, her taut arm unflinching, her eyebrows drawn low and tight, her eyes as hard and cold as the chipped ice scattered around the assassins. Kirika looked towards the doorway as well, waiting, her heartbeat in her ears. The girl should have had her weapon drawn too; however she couldn't seem to pin her thoughts down. All she could do was stare at the curtain, anticipating more waiters, more people, foreseeing them shot down one after the other by her killer partner. All she could do was stare at the only way in and the only way out, waiting in the ideal room for someone to quietly die in.

The conversation outside didn't ebb. The lounge didn't come pouring through the doorway. Kirika heard Mireille take a deep breath and then another, before the woman brusquely sucked air through her teeth. Her lips fluttered, barely perceptible, mouthing a command to herself. To *move*.

Mireille's legs violently thrashed, kicking Park's corpse off the limbs, and then she swung them over the couch to the floor. She scrambled towards the dead waiter, bending down to snatch him by his collar.

"I'm sor-"

"Not here," Mireille said, biting off the words and squashing Kirika's newly found voice.

The girl did as she was told. She watched as Mireille, with no small effort, dragged the waiter by the scruff of his neck out of sight behind the couch with one hand, the other not willing to relinquish her pistol. She was buying them time. A little time sacrificed now for more later when it really would count. Mireille still believed they could get out clean.

Kirika stood there feeling useless as Mireille trod the melting ice into the carpet to soak with the blood, the experienced assassin rearranging the scene as best she could, sanitising it for the casual eye. The bucket once again held the wine, and the glasses were hurriedly stood upright, placed near the foot of the couch. With the blonde's arms under his Lee-Sung Park was put to rest comfortably, lying on the sofa as if sleeping or intoxicated, his eyelids pressed shut and his head turned away from the doorway. The scene wouldn't hold up for long, but maybe long enough.

"You go first."

Kirika looked at her partner as Mireille grabbed a throw cushion to toss over the waiter's blood pooled on the floor-it was a poor cover. She didn't want to go first. She didn't want to go without Mireille. This was all because of Kirika's actions. She *had* to be here until Mireille got out.

"Mire-"

"*Go*. I was taken here. You were *not*."

Kirika hesitated. But Mireille was right. The woman was a skilful pretender, she could and would forge a path to freedom paved with lies and misdirection if it came to that, and furthermore could stretch out the time they had to escape suspicion. Kirika would just endanger her if she remained in a room that was meant to be private... more than she already had. Kirika had to get out, had to leave unseen, and had to pray Mireille managed the same.

Kirika needn't have worried about being seen. No one cared to look at her still. She was still the outsider, still didn't matter. She walked through the lounge as she had before, unopposed and unsought after. There was blood on her hands, yet even that stain on her didn't change anything. The people couldn't smell the blood or the predator passing through them. They were ignorant to the death around them, ignorant of the parallel world that existed right beside theirs-their world of laughter and smiles, of simple problems and simple lives. So often did the two crossover, so often did no one notice.

The darkhaired assassin walked past Hiroki, the young man too enamoured with his new friendships with other girls to note her passage. Kirika imagined if she sat down next to him again he wouldn't be able to tell, let alone tell she had been gone for a long while, stealing his boss's life. Her orange juice sat on the table in front of the couch, in front of the empty space where she had been, forgotten. Forgotten like her.

Into the foyer Kirika stole, into the dark recesses. The rain was coming down heavy outside, pounding against the street and the Boudoir's windows. People came inside, gasping, drenched, the rain enough to distract them from the figure in the shadows. They didn't see her watching them. They didn't see her watch a blonde woman flitter through the lounge, deflecting casual inquiries and repelling the too curious with guile and wit. Not even the woman herself saw her as she left through the foyer, exited the building and peered up into the rain-filled sky.

The umbrella popped open with a whoosh, and for a moment Mireille stiffened. Next to her, Kirika held up their clear umbrella over the blonde's head. Mireille looked at her, and had a glance at the umbrella she had probably thought misplaced. Then without a word Noir walked down the street, with the rain and dark clouds above.

* * *

Noir carried the silence with them through the night; an impassive, faceless pair, a charade amongst the masses for the masses; right up to the front door of the safehouse. Once inside, once in a place where it was only them and their world, Mireille visibly changed. They were small changes-Kirika questioned whether the woman herself was even aware of them-but she saw. The blonde's muscles tensed, her motion no longer so smooth and controlled but sharp and stiff, at last governed by the previously withheld emotion that was creeping into her hardening features. Her brow began to gain lines as her eyes seemed to become a colder blue and her lips pulled into a darker red. Mireille could burn hot or she could run cold... so very cold. It was the ice that Kirika faced now. But fiery or frosty, it was still anger. It still stung.

"A plan is only good if it's followed," Mireille said. She was careful with her tone, as careful as she was with propping the umbrella against the wall in the genkan. The words still cut, but precisely, keenly, no wasted wrath, straight and to a razor's point. She removed her high heeled shoes one at a time just as painstakingly, bringing them with her in one hand as she walked, several inches shorter, into the living room. "There is no plan if it's not followed." The woman's hand slipped inside the slit of her dress, undoing the holster around her thigh. She turned around to Kirika, gun and ammunition in one hand and shoes in the other. "I know you understand this."

"I'm sorry, Mireille," Kirika said softly.

Mireille surely heard her despite the Japanese girl's hushed voice; however it was as if she hadn't. "He was under my control," the blonde continued, slightly more firm. She made tiny gestures with the shoes in her hand down at her side, small exclamations with every other word. "You broke his neck."

Kirika lowered her head, remembering.

"You always do this. This is a partnership."

"I'm sorry..."

"You can't just do your own thing when you feel like it. One day it will go wrong. It *will* go wrong. And it only takes that one time."

Kirika found herself staring at the shoes as they jerked about every so slightly. She had nothing for Mireille. Nothing of substance to say, no explanation. The girl tried to find something, some words, *something*, but only the tired platitude of 'I'm sorry' was there. She went for it again-she had nothing else. "I'm sorry," Kirika struggled. "I..."

"I keep expecting you to be where you shouldn't. I keep questioning if I can rely on you. If I can't trust you..."

"I... couldn't..." Kirika stammered, her face crumbling alongside her voice. "I... It was..."

The shoes stilled. With her head against her chest Kirika watched from the corner of her eye as her partner put the shoes and the thigh holster down on the kotatsu. The girl looked up to see Mireille standing in front of her. She looked at her face. The ice had melted.

Mireille placed her hands on Kirika's shoulders. Slowly, somewhat gingerly, the hands slid around Kirika's back as the woman drew her into a warm embrace. "I'm sorry," Mireille whispered. When she said it, it sounded as it should, like Kirika had wanted to sound. It sounded real, not an echo of a half-remembered feeling. Kirika pressed into her. At least this felt real. "Tonight... what happened... I should have known better."

Kirika tensed against the woman and her sympathy. It was left unsaid, as it always was, but she understood better where the compassion was coming from now. Mireille believed she'd had no control over herself, that something, *someone* else had taken over, wielding her hands as weapons. The darkness was easy to blame. Everything bad within Kirika rolled into one convenient source. However Altena's voice was strangely silent, her other self asleep for now. Tonight there had been no darkness. Tonight there had only been Kirika.

"It will get better..." Mireille tried to soothe, the assassin unwieldy with the sentiment. But she tried for Kirika. She tried because she cared, because she felt Kirika deserved it. Because Kirika was crying. Mireille didn't know that the tears were for her and her misplaced kindness. "It will. I promise." It was a lie. In her short life though Kirika had learned that lies could comfort, at least for a while, at least until you found the truth... or it found you.

* * *

On another day, during another night, Mireille looked through her compact binoculars at a particular large house down the road. It was one of several large homes in an affluent Naka-ku suburb in Yokohama; each shamelessly walled off from the street and the rest of the community, each its own private stronghold. Mireille kept herself behind one of those ten-foot high walls, beyond the corona of a streetlamp, a voyeur in the night. There wasn't much to see however. Yet what the assassin did and didn't see told a story. The house she was interested in was dark, shutdown for the night. There were the usual lights of course, at the gated entrance and at the front door, the typical precautions of the upper crust to ward away night stalkers, fabricated and otherwise. But it was the windows Mireille scanned with her binoculars, where there were no lights. Everyone inside had retired long ago, as expected with the hour so late.

Perhaps a more naive onlooker would reflect on whether the house was empty. The job; her life; had weeded out any such naivety from Mireille years prior. The Corsican had no such concerns. She dropped her binoculars from the house's second floor to street level and the curb, where a black car was parked. It too was dark, but every so often two orange pinpricks of light would smoulder in the driver's and front passenger's seat. Yakuza hounds, abiding their master. They wouldn't be here whiling away the night unless there was something worth guarding on the other side of that curb. Indeed, Mireille was far from naive.

The target was the mistress of Shinpei Ichihashi, head of the prominent Ryujin-kai under the Sumiyoshi-kai. The twenty-four year old Yu Sawajira appeared to be an ordinary young woman on paper, the characteristic empty-headed and pretty-faced spoiled sort fit for a man of Ichihashi's reign and influence. Breffort had seen different. At her man's side Sawajira had Ichihashi's ear, an ear she was bending with talk of Ishinomori and Soldats. How on earth such a woman had come into knowledge of affairs so far beyond the scope of her existence hadn't been unveiled in the assignment's brief; however it was enough for Breffort to need her erased from the game. Mireille had mused on the details herself; primarily on why Breffort hadn't favoured Shinpei Ichihashi's removal instead. It was still in the realm of possibility he and his Ryujin-kai could defect to the Ishinomori rebels after his lady love was dead. Maybe Ichihashi was important to Soldats in some way? For some strategy or political agenda Breffort had foreseen? Or was Ichihashi an agent... or perhaps even a member of the organisation? Or it could be that Breffort had simply chosen the easier target of the two-the civilian eye-candy over the entrenched yakuza boss. Mireille had to be careful, had to keep questioning. She would not strengthen Breffort's or Soldats' position in Kanto if she could help it. Mireille had shaken up many regimes in the past with her work; taken out revolutionary leaders just before the crux of popularity, silenced generals before a coup, executed terrorists before a bloody statement; every time she hadn't cared about what might have come after. The consequences, the world after today. The Corsican was an outsider in all affairs, an independent contractor. But this... Soldats made everything personal. Soldats made you think about the world. They made you remember that you had to live in it too.

Mireille watched the guards for a few moments longer. The pair were to keep their leader's property safe; more the woman than the house. And, most likely, to ensure Sawajira stayed faithful to the Ryujin-kai's Kumicho. Mireille didn't think she and Kirika would bump into any guards inside the residence; any form of male temptation would remain outside those walls unless there was an emergency.

So far the two yakuza did little but smoke. Noir's tally of underworld figures slain was gradually building, yet word hadn't spread. The men weren't on alert. Right now the killings probably looked random and isolated to the respective clans and gangs; Soldats had that effect, their modus operandi murky, often alien to the onlooker. It would keep the spotlight off Noir for longer. Nevertheless, someone was bound to notice the sequence of deaths and the professionalism involved sooner or later. Until then Noir would be spared notoriety in Kanto's organised crime arena, and could operate much more easily. Like tonight.

Mireille lowered her binoculars and turned her shrewd gaze to her companion next to her instead. Kirika looked back, as innocuous as she had ever been. No one would have ever guessed at the strength that could fill those thin arms, or the sinister aloofness that could wash over that affecting stare. Memories of the other night still clung to Mireille. The blonde wondered if they troubled Kirika as well. Surely they must. There had always been violence in Kirika-it was her reason for being, at least in the eyes of those who had made her-but it had never been in her nature. Not truly. She had killed because she had to, because it had been expected-but she had *felt* every life she had taken on some level, every murder no less significant than the last. The other night there had been a change. It had been the rooftops of Paris again, it had been the colosseum at the Manor; it had been someone else, another girl. A girl without feeling. A girl who killed because it was easy, because she knew nothing else. That girl scared Mireille. And Mireille wasn't scared of much.

The woman looked at Kirika and what see saw wasn't clear anymore. It wasn't always her dependable partner. Sometimes she saw a random variable. Kirika might follow the plan, she might perform as she did nine times out of ten; flawlessly, efficiently, backing up Mireille every step of the way towards eliminating the target and beyond. Or she might not. She might go completely off on a tangent, to who knows what outcome. Mireille hadn't been anxious for her or herself when the girl had done her own thing in the past. Well, never *that* anxious. No matter how, no matter where, Kirika had still been Mireille's partner, her other half, forever there to watch her back. The last assignment's execution had been something else. There had been no threat to Mireille. There had been nothing to warrant Kirika's behaviour. Nothing... except if it hadn't really been Kirika. Normally Kirika was compliant, open to suggestion, willing to adhere to Mireille's advice and strategies, her voice of experience and reason. Certainly however, the girl was beholden to her own impulses now and again. That other girl... it seemed she was beholden to her impulses as well. But these impulses weren't like Kirika's. They weren't for Mireille's sake; they weren't for something noble in the end. They were... personal. Part of Mireille probed if she was simply taking a dislike to the idea of Kirika becoming increasingly independent; her own person-that wasn't it. This was not Kirika's person. This was not Kirika. This was not Kirika breaching her shell... this was her shell being crushed into itself.

Mireille looked at Kirika and she wondered. Which girl would she hunt down Sawajira with-her partner or a stranger in her skin?

"Let's begin," the Corsican assassin whispered.

* * *

Kirika crossed the road with Mireille, hands in her pockets. Their breath fogged the air; yellow plumes under the sodium vapour of the street lamps. There was no rush in their step, no fear of the light. They walked past the car with the smoking men, pretending not to see them in their dark cabin. To the guards Noir was probably two people out for a late night walk, their reasons their own but no doubt everyday-if the men were even paying attention to the young women passing by. Closer to the sedan Kirika could hear muffled beats coming from inside-music that was bass heavy, virtually cutting the gangsters' ears off from any outside auditory temptation. The men were undisciplined, not true guards, not real soldiers. Not genuine killers.

Noir disappeared behind the eastern wall of the Ryujin-kai estate, returning to the shadows of the night. Kirika took her hands out of her pockets. An instant later her feet were running up the secluding wall, propelling her just high enough to grab the top. She pulled herself up and half over the ledge, lying on her stomach and dropping her arm down just in time to seize Mireille's outstretched hand as the woman followed her climb. Kirika tugged, helping the blonde reach the ledge and join her at the top. Together they slipped over the wall.

The assassin's landed in the garden amid shrubbery and darkness and silence, weapons drawn. For a moment they surveyed their new environment. There had been no blueprints of the house and its grounds to peruse beforehand; this was a private residence, less accessible than a community or commercial building. The lack of a floorplan wouldn't be difficult to work around. Houses generally were the same at their core, with kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms. Each floor would take seconds to sweep.

Mireille glanced at Kirika, and Kirika eyed her partner sidelong. Mireille lingered for a second longer than she should have, however it was only that second before she was darting towards the house. Kirika moved also, making her own approach. She headed for the back, keeping her distance from the building proper, wary of sensor lights or other motion detectors. When the girl reached the rear of the house she paused, studying it; the door, the porch light, the windows. The porch light was on though with the perimeter wall there was no one awake to see her.

The Japanese teenager resumed her approach, quietly running up to the back door. She peeked inside the windows, observing a gloomy kitchen. There was a motion sensor in one corner; an alarm panel was probably closeby. Kirika carefully tried the door and not surprisingly found its handle stuck-locked. With a little time her nimble fingers and some delicate tools would make short work of the door's security.

Kirika sent a silenced round into the lock, where she knew it would do the most damage, and with her shoulder and body weight pressed against it broke the seal on the backdoor. It was controlled, virtually noiseless, and far quicker than a lockpick. She opened the slightly splintered door just enough for her to fit through and closed it behind her, her back against the door. The green glow of an LCD display pointed her eyes to one of the house's alarm panels affixed to a wall, but the alarm itself was switched off. Not disabled, not Mireille's work. Alarms had backdoor manufacturers' codes, emergency resets, vulnerable wires, and inbuilt batteries that could be pulled clean out-they were by no means a flawless security measure. But an alarm could only prove its value if it was turned on.

Kirika slipped through the kitchen, systematically filing away the detail that the motion detectors could be ignored. From room to room she moved, her mind drawing its own plans of the house as she cleared her side of the ground floor. She met Mireille in the foyer seconds later, where the stairs to the second storey were.

"The front door was unlocked," the blonde assassin breathed.

Kirika stoically noted the information, adding it to the list. Neither mentioned the alarm; Mireille would have discovered it early during her own sweep, likewise as Kirika had. The alarm, the door... The target being careless or forgetful? Something else?

[Sometimes people are simpler than you would think. Sometimes they are much more complicated... I hear something.]

"Kirika."

Kirika blinked, her glassy gaze vanishing. Mireille's face in front of her seemed pensive, the ease of their entry likely disturbing her.

The girl turned her head slightly, angling it upstairs. "I hear something."

A look passed between the pair, and then together they crept up the stairs.

At the landing Mireille went one way and Kirika the other. The faint noises turned out to be on Kirika's side, and soon, after quickly inspecting the other rooms, she came to a closed door with the noises behind them. She touched the handle, slowly, so very slowly, testing it. It was locked. A breach seemed the best option, a bold and brutal entry, taking anybody on the other side off guard. But it would expose her and Mireille to possible counter fire. The noises could even be a lure, a trap waiting to be sprung. This would not be another Boudoir. Kirika would not put Mireille in unnecessary danger again. Tonight was a night for caution... and atonement.

There were glass doors with light curtains at the end of the hall, leading out onto a small balcony. These doors were unlocked. Outside, there was another balcony alongside it, connected to the room with the closed door. Only a short leap across open air separated them.

[Why look? Why take the time? Strike now, strike hard, while the advantage is yours. This is not you.]

Kirika climbed up on the balcony's metal railing, balanced herself upright for a moment, and took a single springing step over to the neighbouring balcony's guard rail. She jumped across the drop as if were a puddle on the ground, the height inconsequential to the horizontal distance; and the latter was nowhere near daunting. The nimble girl hit her mark easily, resuming her balancing act on the opposite railing before hopping down into the other balcony.

Another white gossamer curtain was draped across the glass doors that opened into the second balcony, and Kirika took refuge behind them, a silhouette against the city light illuminating night's sky. She looked through the glass and the curtain, the scene tinted by an ethereal snowy film, into someone's bedroom, into someone's private moment. She recognised Yu Sawajira straight away, her likeness memorised for the assignment, the woman's shoulder length wavy pink locks unmistakable. Sawajira was lying in her bed. But she was not sleeping. And she was not alone.

Sawajira was making the noises. Her mouth opened and closed in gentle O-patterns, her head tilting back against the pillow and her eyes peacefully shut. She arched her neck and brought her arms back underneath the pillow, grabbing fistfuls, every muscle straining, strumming on her skin. She didn't seem in control of herself, yet she didn't seem to care. Hovering above her was a nocturnal visitor; another woman, a foreigner to Sawajira, slender and fair with long straight black hair. This woman's hands and arms were like serpents, like separate living things, sliding over Sawajira's unclothed body with the grace and ease, fingers performing a ballet over flesh. The woman's head was at Sawajira's chest, kissing with delicate lips; kissing openly, freely, wherever they might be. Places that Kirika had seldom viewed before on a woman. This woman wasn't embarrassed to touch them, feel them as she liked, even letting her tongue slip loose to join in.

Kirika's breathing slowed, matching the measured breaths of the pink haired woman. She watched. She watched as the naked black haired woman moved down Sawajira's quietly writhing form. Sawajira's legs opened, inviting the motion, and the other woman accepted the welcome. Dark hair spilled around Sawajira's thighs, her visitor's fingers and lips coming to rest in a place Kirika hadn't expected. It was as if the unknown woman was playing a musical instrument, Sawajira eagerly responding to the attention shown down there, her noisemaking loudening. Kirika watched, innately comprehending she was seeing something not meant to be seen, something personal and... special. She watched, captivated, as the two women tried to become one being, sharing something undefinable to her, something she couldn't describe yet knew was important. Was this... love? Was this what was done? She had thought she'd had some understanding of it, believed that television and pictures and writings had given her a passable portrayal of what love was. They had not. Kirika thought of Mireille. Had Mireille done this? With who? Had she loved those people? Was this what awaited Kirika with Mireille? Was this what Mireille wanted from her? Was this what Kirika wanted? The teenager's mind was numb with sights and questions, overwrought, confused and fascinated and frightened all at once.

The black haired woman stopped. She reached under the bed.

[Move!]

Instinct propelled Kirika back over the railing, the girl tucking in her legs as she cleared it, and she seized the edge of the balcony as the glass doors exploded outwards in a shower of shards and shotgun pellets. Broken glass stuck in her hair and torn bits of curtain fluttered by on the night air as a second deafening shotgun blast passed above her head, scarring the guard rail. She pulled herself up until her eyes were level with the floor, catching the black haired woman roll off the bed and Sawajira scream over and over not in joy but in terror, pulling the bedsheets towards her, hastily covering herself.

Kirika pulled herself up the rest of the way, vaulting over the railing and back into the balcony, pistol searching for the combat shotgun-wielding woman. The doorknob from the locked bedroom door flew across the room and an instant later the door crashed open, shot and kicked into unlocking, Mireille bursting in. The blonde took the scene in immediately, and much differently than Kirika had moments earlier, firing a flurry of rounds after the armed woman as the attacker flung herself through the doorway of an adjoining room, an ensuite. Sawajira screamed louder, bug-eyed at the appearance of Mireille.

Kirika dashed into the bedroom through the shattered balcony doors as Mireille promptly shot Sawajira in the forehead, abruptly shutting her screaming up. Yu Sawajira fell backwards, head landing on her pillow staring at the ceiling, quickly soaking it through with her spreading blood.

Mireille leapt for cover at the foot of the bed as the barrel of a shotgun stuck out of the bathroom doorway, firing several times, punching plaster out of the walls and shredding bedsheets. Kirika identified the weapon's compact form as a Mossberg 590A1 with a pistol-like cruiser grip-and that the naked woman had already expended half of its magazine capacity.

"Soldats," Mireille sneered at the other side of the bed.

Kirika hummed her agreement. One of Altena's priestesses. The girl realised why Sawajira had fallen under Breffort's notice.

After all the chaos, the following quiet was strange to Kirika's ears. She peeked over the bed into the bathroom where the priestess had holed herself up, listening intently. The girl could hear the woman's heavy breathing. She doubted there was extra ammunition in there, and the woman's clothes were scattered about the bedroom floor. Still, neither side; assassins nor priestess; could wait the night out.

"We're not here for you," Mireille called. Kirika glanced at her. It sounded like a blatant untruth.

"Only death for traitors!" was the snarled response.

Mireille sighed wearily, as if she had known the answer before it had been given. Kirika wondered why her partner had bothered saying anything.

Light spilled into the hallway outside the bedroom. A cadence of footsteps came after, urgent thumping against the stairs.

Kirika met Mireille's eyes briefly. In the next moment the girl was dashing across the bedroom and through the battered doorway, the blonde's hail of muted gunfire into the ensuite at her back, covering her escape.

The young assassin surged into the hall with her Beretta M1934 hammer cocked, needing to take on the newcomers quickly and with surprise on her side. She ran to the landing, the foyer downstairs entering into view with the house's front door wide open. There were men in suits on the stairs. Not the crisp dark homogeneous suits of Soldats agents, but the cheaper and more untidy baggy suits of gangsters. The two guards in the car hadn't been quite so deaf not to hear the commotion a shotgun could induce.

Kirika and the yakuza almost bumped into each other; the men were practically at the top of the stairs, running behind one another-they ran too close, too tight knit in a confined space. It was Kirika, with more room to move, with the higher ground, who struck first.

The assassin lashed out with her left forearm, smacking into the lead yakuza's laryngeal prominence, crushing the larynx beneath. He stopped his ascent and stumbled, grabbing a guardrail and his throat, doubling over to expose his partner behind him. Kirika fired the gun in her right hand, a bullet at close to point-blank range seeking and finding the second gangster's astonished face.

As the gangster fell back, Kirika hit the first man in the head with her arm again before he could think about what was happening, whacking him into the right-most railing to instinctively steady himself while he continued his struggle to force air past his throat. It was the girl's pistol that delivered the knockout blow-a shot to the temple ceased the yakuza's dazed wheezing. He rolled down the stairs after his friend, the both of them laid out on the foyer by the conclusion of their trip, their threat ended before it could really start.

Kirika raced back to Sawajira's bedroom. Mere seconds had past, Mireille's gun still emitting smoke as Kirika peeked within and tapped against the doorframe with her own weapon, announcing her presence to her partner.

Mireille looked over her shoulder for the briefest of moments, confirming Kirika's return, and then flicked her head in the direction of the ensuite, firing another round of staggered suppressing shots through the doorway. Kirika got the message. The teenager ran into the bedroom and leapt on the bed, bouncing off it to reach the edge of the ensuite's doorway as the blonde's 9mm bullets flew by not a few inches from her.

Kirika pressed herself against the wall beside the bathroom's entrance, sliding inaudibly closer, wary of giving away her position to the armed and anxious woman inside. When she got close enough to see through the doorway she dissected the view on the other side. Blood smeared along the tiles, collecting in the seams; spent shotgun shells still rolling lazily through the stains; bulletholes splitting open the sink; a mirror above similarly broken, riddled with spiderweb cracks. The mirror held Kirika's gaze. From her angle she could see the priestess off to one side, sitting on the floor with her back against the bathtub. There was blood on her and on the bath, a lot of blood, the colour standing out on her fair skin and the white tub behind her. One of Mireille's opening shots had found its mark in the black haired woman's gut.

Through the jagged mirror shards Kirika watched the wounded woman point her shotgun in the general direction of the doorway. The girl pulled her head back as a shotgun blast was launched into the bedroom-from the angle it was no more than a retaliatory warning shot, the pellets peppering the bedroom ceiling. The priestess was slow to chamber another shell, her arms shaking as they fought to drag the forend back and forth. The teenage assassin watched, calculating reduced reflexes and awareness, calculating how the woman would die.

It was the mirror Kirika stared at as the silenced barrel of her Beretta snaked around the doorframe. Kirika watched the black haired woman's face streaked with pain and wiped blood, watched as she pulled the trigger. The woman in the broken mirror gurgled and jolted backwards, her arms and her shotgun in them dropping limp into her lap. There was a hole in her neck, dark blood sucking in and out with her rasping breath and spilling down her chest.

Kirika stepped around the doorframe. The woman in front of her was so different from the woman she had watched minutes ago. Her body, though still unclothed, didn't have the same beauty it once had. How quickly it had changed. How quickly a being capable of such love and emotion had been twisted into something else. Blood had that affect. Blood clinging to her, almost everywhere, the woman no better to look at than anyone else now. Kirika watched the woman battle to breath, to live and keep experiencing everything she had with Sawajira earlier tonight-keep experiencing life. Kirika wondered if that was why people struggled. People fought so hard to stay alive. She had killed many, intuitively knowing and saddened that she was robbing them of something more than just their life, but never quite understanding the loss. Kirika did not have that acquaintance with living. She did not grasp life like other people. She faced death without fear because she was not part of that world of emotion. All she had was Mireille and her oath. Kirika lived so Mireille could live. That was all. That had been enough.

Another hole sprang open in the woman's chest, blooming red. She didn't jerk, didn't move, her gurgling quietening. She stared back at Kirika, but there was nothing in her eyes anymore. No passion, no fear. Her fight was over.

Behind Kirika, Mireille lowered her gun.

* * *

Kirika stood in the lonely garden at the back of the safehouse, the residence confirmed secure once more. The sun was rising, the first light of a new day peeking above the horizon. Dew glistened on the grass and leaves as the pinks and reds touched them, as if reminding the plants that they weren't forgotten, that they still had life. Kirika smiled. The garden wasn't lonely anymore, not while she was in it. That was all it took. Just one person; one person's interest, one person's attention-one person's care and compassion. As long as Kirika was here, as long as she cared, the garden mattered. And she mattered.

The teenager looked over her shoulder back towards the house. Through the windows she saw Mireille sitting in her usual spot at the kotatsu, picking away at her laptop. Kirika smiled again.

The girl walked back to the house and slid open the veranda door, returning to the living room. Mireille didn't look up, but Kirika knew that she knew she was there.

"We have another," Mireille said, eyes on her computer's screen.

Kirika accepted the inevitability without reply. She walked around the low table and sat beside the blonde. Kirika was wanted. She was needed. She remembered that she mattered to at least one person. That was all it took. People fought to stay alive. So did Kirika. It was for Mireille... and it was for herself. She didn't want this to end. She didn't want to never see Mireille again, never smell her, never hear her voice and listen to the woman call her name. She wanted to live this life and experience everything that came with it. Kirika would fight for it. She would fight to keep it.

Slowly Kirika leaned against Mireille. Her head fell, eventually finding a pillow on Mireille's shoulder, her dark locks among corn silk. Mireille braced an instant, but then she relaxed.

Kirika didn't understand much. What she felt others did not, what she thought others did not. But that was her. It was okay. As long as she *lived*, it was okay.

Kirika reached out and touched Mireille's hand, stilling it above the keyboard. The blonde looked at her, a mixture of puzzlement and surprise in her normally steady gaze. Kirika held her love's hand and a moment later her love held her hand back. The daily routine was what you made it. Life was what you made it.

* * *

To be continued...

Author's ramblings:

Due to my hiatus this took freaking ages to finish. It signifies the real start of Kirika and Mireille's physical intimacy. I know it took a while to get to this point! I hope I did a good enough job orchestrating it.

Hope I haven't reused any Japanese names! I lose track.

Kaicho = Godfather

Sosai = President


End file.
